Fleischer Studios Superman

[King Ryan7708]

Im watching these on DVD now. What does everyone think of these? Sure they can be very corny sometimes, but I like em! ;)

[The Guard]

One of the better cartoons ever. Beautiful animation, and just cool stories. Lots of mad scientists and such. Very true to the early Superman...

[Joe Tully]

They're pretty good, considering both the time period and the time limitation of about 7-10 minutes. Plus, they're legendary in terms of their use of light and the innovation in design, using squares & rectangles instead of the ovals and circles that were used in funny cartoons. You can tell that later shows like BTAS used plenty of rectangles and squares too. These old Supes toons are where action cartoons were born.

I have the Diamond set, which is what I assume you have too. It's great stuff. It's also interesting to see Supes going after Nazis and the Japanese. It gives you some idea of what was going on inside people's heads at the time.

[Cosmocat]

Originally posted by King Ryan7708
Im watching these on DVD now. What does everyone think of these? Sure they can be very corny sometimes, but I like em! ;)

One of the best Superhero cartoon series, period. Probably the best animation and best overall style we'll ever see for a superhero... :(

[Heehaw]

I've got the Diamond DVD. My only complaint is the burnt in date at the beginning of each episode, plus the shows aren't in the proper aspect ratio. To my knowledge, they've never been released that way. It's not that big of a deal, though, since the cropping isn't all that bad.

[Joe Tully]

Those cartoons weren't released in widescreen, so you shouldn't be missing anything there due to cropping, if that's what you're talking about. The dates are a mild annoyance though, I agree with you there.

[Arachkid]

I loved watching the Fleischer cartoons growing up. I've always felt that they had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed BTAS.

[Nightwing]

Hehe, I always loved those cartoons, even though I saw the stories as basically having the same plot: Lois told not to go somewhere cuz there's a mad scientist or something, then she goes anyway, then the scientist unleashes whatever mechanical weapon he has, then Superman saves Lois. Gotta love it. :)

Of course I haven't seen them at all recently, or as extensively as the hardcore fans of the show (and yes, there's a large following :)). But I didn't know they were out on DVD! What's the skinny? I have to get em!

[Ricochet]

Next time I go to to Borders, I'm getting the DVD! :)

[Joe Tully]

There's actually 3 sets out there, the Cartoon Crazys one and the "Diamond" one put out by Bosko Video and "The Superman Cartoons of Max and Dave Fleischer". I've heard bad reviews of the Cartoon Crazys one, and they have a bad reputation, so I avoided those. Cartoon Crazys has 2 DVDs, one for the Fleischers and one for the Famous ones made after the Fleischers left. They are packaged seperately and so you have to buy both to get all of them.

The "Diamond" one has all of the Fleischer and Famous ones on 1 DVD and has gotten better reviews. It sounds like it has better audio and higher visual quality. Pretty good considering these are Public Domain materials.

The 3rd, I don't know much about. It has some extras including the Warner Bros. cartoon parody "Snafuperman" and I'm sure is better than the Cartoon Crazys one too. It also has all of the Supes toons on 1 disk. But for some reason, even with the extra Snafuperman, it's running time is less than the Diamond one, which makes me think that it might be missing opening titles or something like that.

Yeah, these get kind of repetitive. You can set your watch by Lois's capture by the mad scientist. :) But the repitition in some plot elements don't detract much from the story IMO.

Here's a link to the Diamond collection:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6305943389/

And the 3rd one I mentioned:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6305078955/

Unfortunately, Amazon mixes up the reviews for each of these sets, so the best thing to do might be to look at the technical info and decide what you want. I know that Diamond is pretty good, but I don't know anything about the quality on that last one, so I'd go with Diamond if I were you, unless someone else here can vouch for that 3rd set.

A quick, slightly OT question too: the Amazon review says that the Diamond edition has the Fleischer non-Supes toon Play Safe as an extra, but I can't find it. Is it hidden somewhere, or is Amazon just plain wrong?

[Heehaw]

A couple of the releases feature newly created sound effects in DD5.1 sound. They are hideous and really clash with the old music/dialogue. They are remastered, but stay away.

The Diamond edition is the way to go. The quality varies from horrible(the circus/ape episode is dark/dingy) to excellent(the first couple of episodes are very clean).

As for my widescreen comment, if you view the title cards, at the beginning of each episode, you will notice that the type goes off the sides of the screen. It varies with each episode, but this is what I meant by cropping. I'm thinking that the aspect ratio is "wider" than 1.33:1, but not by much. It's definitely not framed properly. Somewhere out on the Internet, I've read a few reviews that mentioned the same thing.

[Mr. Obsession]

I have the third one (the one with Snafuperman) which was released by Image Entertainment.

Looking at the back of the case it has 18 shorts:
1. Superman
2. The Mechanical Monsters
3. Billion Dollar Limited
4. The Arctic Giant
5. The Bulleteers
6. The Magnetic Telescope
7. Electric Earthquake
8. Volcano
9. Terror on the Midway
10. Japoteurs
11. Showdown
12. Eleventh Hour
13. Distruction, Inc.
14. The Mummy Strikes
15. Jungle Drums
16. The Underground World
17. Secret Agent
18. Snafuperman

Running time: 147 minutes


I suspect that there's one or two shorts missing, thus explaining the shorter running length from the Diamond collection.

One of the problems with the DVD is that the shorts are very grainy at times, suggesting that non of the shorts were digitally cleaned up before the transfer.

I also suspect that some of the episode are edited, but it could also be that my DVD player's acting up again. :(

Still it is nice collection, and defiantly a must have for fans of action animation, especially American action animation. This is history people.

At any rate I do want the Diamond Collection.

One other thing about the Flescher shorts is that you can defiantly see their influence in Superman: TAS. Maybe that's just one of the reasons I loved STAS from the beginning. :)

[Mr. Obsession]

Originally posted by Heehaw
A couple of the releases feature newly created sound effects in DD5.1 sound. They are hideous and really clash with the old music/dialogue. They are remastered, but stay away.

The Diamond edition is the way to go. The quality varies from horrible(the circus/ape episode is dark/dingy) to excellent(the first couple of episodes are very clean).

As for my widescreen comment, if you view the title cards, at the beginning of each episode, you will notice that the type goes off the sides of the screen. It varies with each episode, but this is what I meant by cropping. I'm thinking that the aspect ratio is "wider" than 1.33:1, but not by much. It's definitely not framed properly. Somewhere out on the Internet, I've read a few reviews that mentioned the same thing.

Hmm... what shorts are on the Diamond collection? If I have them all, I don't see the point in getting another edition, especially if the visual quality is the same.

[Joe Tully]

Originally posted by Mr. Obsession

One other thing about the Flescher shorts is that you can defiantly see their influence in Superman: TAS. Maybe that's just one of the reasons I loved STAS from the beginning.

Yeah, most notably there was Little Girl Lost which had the Fleischer comet and borrowed the Magnetic Telescope. I thought that was a really cool tribute to the old cartoons. :cool:

BTW you have the same cartoons as I do, plus you have Snafuperman of course, but looking at my case it says 147 minutes. I have no idea what that means, maybe they just excluded Snafuperman in the count on yours or something.

[JusticeLeagueLegion]

One of the stupidest episodes was "Secret Agent." I thought that episode was rediculous. Same with "Artic Giant." But "Mad Scientist" (Aka Superman) was pretty good. Plus the "Magnetic Telescope."