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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Sunday, October 27, 2002
05:02 - Superman gets the coolest cartoons

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For animation fans, one of the best pieces of classical revelry in the art for its own sake-- much more so than the self-conscious Warner stuff of the era, which is valuable for entirely different reasons-- is the wartime Superman series by Dave Fleischer.

Fleischer's early Popeye cartoons (which Cartoon Network trots out with nostalgic glee every Sunday night, accompanied by informative and often snidely geeky commentary by the narrator) are themselves immensely good fun; the color Paramount Popeyes are episodic nonsense in the vein of modern Saturday-morning dreck, but the Fleischer stuff was art. Deliciously quirky (and very human) animation and engaging original music accompanied lavish background art and very clever songs to create a tapestry with rhythm, art with a beat. I love it when the "I'll do anything that you do" episode comes on, or the classically giggle-inducing "Goonland" one, or the lavish "Sindbad the Sailor" featurette with the full-multiplane backgrounds, or the "Beware of Barnacle Bill" one with its delicious song-and-dance complete with sneering volta at the end: Just like you just did to that poor Barnacle Bill the Sailor! The love for the craft that is evident in these shows raises them to a level of enjoyability well beyond what was evident in animation through the "Golden Age" of the 50s, the experimental floundering of the 60s, the dark, dark Scooby-Doo-dominated valley of the 70s, and the directionless 80s. It wasn't until the animation industry was kick-started in the 90s by The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, Animaniacs, and (yes) even Beavis & Butt-head that TV animation started being respectable again, drawing out of the woodwork the fans of the medium who were no longer ashamed to say they grew up watching The Superfriends. And it raised to power giants like Genndy Tartakovsky and Jhonen Vasquez, for which I'll forever be grateful.

But anyway-- I was talking about Superman, wasn't I?

Right: They just showed a set of the old 40s shorts tonight, the usual all-too-brief list of outings that survives the era (the one with the giant gorilla is in pretty sorry shape). If you aren't familiar with these, you really ought to track them down and give them a look: they're astonishingly well animated, with every frame lovingly detailed, and cels painted with the same depth as the backgrounds on which they were placed-- an extremely expensive process indeed, and the reason why the shorts bankrupted the Fleischer studio and forced them to give the Popeye property over to Paramount afterwards (much to the series' detriment). But the quality they paid for is up on the screen.

Watch these shorts for the visual language in which the plot points are conveyed: the transmitter on the volcano failing to transmit its SOS message because the line has been severed. The Moderne-as-hell levers and dials on the machine the Mad Scientist has aimed at the city's bridge, as he cranks up the dial. Superman's quick but human leaps down the staircase to safety as the observatory collapses around him. The postures of the flying robots as they snap to attention. The frame-for-frame correctness of the silhouette on the wall each time Clark Kent slips aside to don his costume.

If there's any one filmmaking nit I would pick with the series, it's that all too often, there's far too much good animation and even dialogue that's tucked away into a too-long fadeout at the end of a scene. Modern shows, when they do a fade-to-black, make sure to have the on-screen characters at rest, in a static position, and finished with all their dialogue and useful facial expressions before the fade begins. But in the "mad scientist" episode, for instance, Clark's wink to the audience at the end (and that bright, conspiratorial grin that belies the starkness of his usual facial construction) are all but lost in the ponderous gradient.

But no matter. This stuff is gold, and we're unlikely to see anything with its depth of production quality in anything short of feature films again. Sure, modern TV looks better still than the Superman shorts-- but they benefit from computer coloring/modeling and cartoony senses of timing, both of which allow animators to create stuff that represents a lot less pain and effort than ever before for the sake of something so fleeting as a seven-minute short.

Fast-forward to 1996 or so, when the new post-Bruce-Timm Superman series appears. This stuff follows the success of Batman: The Animated Series, which made waves (and rightly so) with its innovative use of black-paper backgrounds, nostalgic Golden Age of Comics art style, and unflinching willingness to tackle big issues with real adult characters. (I love that Mad Hatter episode, with the little Carroll lines tossed in willy-nilly, almost offhand in their appropriateness to each scene.) But Superman, which now shows after the anime chunk on Saturday's "Adult Swim" lineup, is bigger and jollier, more smirky and fun. And yet it has moments of great, honest beauty.

Last week they showed the "Apokolips... Now!" duet, the two-parter in which Superman leads the defense of the Earth against Darkseid... except in the end, it isn't him who leads the resistance, but the gruff Dan Turpin-- sort of the Detective Bullock of the Superman world, except that he uses his big bushy eyebrows for a determined, no-nonsense good when it comes down to brass tacks, instead of bitterly getting in the hero's way. He's a recurring character for the first two seasons. And then, in "Apokolips... Now!", he incites the people of Metropolis to defend their planet, even with Superman displayed in front of them, helpless and bound. Turpin frees Superman with a spear to the manacles, and a deus ex machina in the form of forces from New Genesis appears in order to force Darkseid back from his conquest. As Darkseid retreats, Turpin taunts him, getting in that one last barb. And Darkseid turns, scowls, and with a gesture strikes Turpin dead.

Cut to the funeral, in which the eulogy is being read and sung... in Hebrew. Which makes a startled kind of sense, considering the deeply Jewish conception of Superman in the first place. But I was quite surprised, and pleasantly so, to see the show's producers take such an active and sincere role in paying homage to that. Just as one of the Batman episodes consisted of three featurettes done in the respective styles of the 50s pulp stuff (the ones with the BIFF! POW! SOK! and all that), Frank Miller's tank-like black-on-red, and another style that I can't recall at the moment: these guys know and love their stuff, and it shows.

Superman stands by Turpin's gravestone, and says over it: "Earth didn't need a super man. Just a brave one."

From TV Tome:

NOTE: This episode is dedicated to the memory of Jack Kirby (1917-1994). The dedication appears at the end of the episode and reads as follows: "This episode is dedicated to the memory of Jack Kirby/ Long Live The King". Jack Kirby was one of the most influential and respected illustrator and creator of comic books. Amoung the characters he created or co-created are Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, Boy Commandos, Challengers of the Unknown, The New Gods, Kamandi, Darkseid, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Captain Victory, The Silver Surfer, The Mighty Thor and many others.
* Continuing character Dan Turpin dies in this episode. His gravestone reads "Daniel Turpin/ Earth's Greatest/ Hero".

That visual has stuck with me all week, and I've been trying to figure out how to approach it. Now that I've seen afresh the original material as well as the modern incarnation, and been able to appreciate how much love went into each one respectively, it does me good to realize that Golden Ages do cycle back around so we can enjoy them again.

Lileks said at one point that while most of the world probably thinks Americans relate best to Superman, we probably actually find Spider-man-- with his smirky smartass teenager humor and his do-the-right-thing-because-that's-what-good-people-do mentality-- to be a better fit for us. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I do feel it's probably true; we certainly don't individually feel like a bunch of Colossi striding the earth, knocking down evil with a single blow of our jutting lantern-like chins. But Superman is a paragon of something else to us: not something to aspire to, but a personification in human form of moral rightness and strength, something free of religious affiliation but unambiguous in what it stands for. It's a rock upon which the waves can dash themselves in vain. It's the prototypical Superhero, the concept that The Right Thing will be done, in the long run-- taking, if necessary, the metaphorical form of a punch in the mouth. It's a way of reducing Roosevelt and Hitler to political cartoons, caricature heads on Mr. Universe bodies, putting them in the ring and sounding the bell, and watching the inevitable result ensue.

Superheroes of this model are deeply ingrained into our consciousness by now, and they're one of the first metaphors that leaps to mind in a time of crisis, when we need to reduce the world to a context our minds can manage. And now that metaphor has some very real people, lives, stories, and national identities tied up into it. It keeps reinventing itself, and just as with the Santa Claus lexicon, it survives on self-referential nostalgia as much as on new angles on new material.

How lucky we are that in this day and age, we have Justice League instead of The Superfriends.

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© Brian Tiemann