The circus is in town and Lois Lane doesn’t love it. She has been sent by the Daily Planet to review the circus, a job she clearly considers beneath her. But then a little monkey accidentally releases Gigantic the Gorilla and a rampage ensues! Lois’s day is saved! Hooray!
Some other circus animals are also involved in the rampage, so Superman gets to catch a panther and some lions (though I think one lion is still on the loose at the end of the cartoon), but the real feature here is Superman versus Gorilla. I’ve made a big deal about how most of these shorts lean into Superman versus some Sci-Fi concept, but this one continues the trend of last episode of pitting the hero against Nature. Now, granted, I argued that the the T-Rex should count as a sci-fi thing because they were relatively recently discovered at the time. And yeah, gorillas had only been accepted by the scientific community as existing for less than a century at the time of this cartoon’s creation, but still, this is post-King Kong. A regular ape is not sci-fi post-King King.
Does Lois wind up in distress in this one? Of course she does. Is it because she’s inherently a weak, feminine figure? No, it’s because she rescues a little girl from Gorilla Attack. Good for you, Lois. She earned her scoop on this story.
Also worth mentioning: the little monkey that incites the problems in this one is dressed like a bellhop. I’m pretty sure this design will be reused as a toy owned by Titano the chimp in the 90s Superman cartoon.
Now, this is the last of the actual Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons. After this they are taken over by Famous Studios. I remember the general opinion being that quality drops after this, but there are several things that haven’t happened yet that I remember being good. Let’s find out if I still think so as we continue down the path, I suppose.
One thing about David Vincent is that he is an extremely direct person. I’ve faulted him multiple times for being so open about his fighting of this alien invasion. Well, in this episode he actually uses an alias to disguise his identity! Daniel Baxter he says he is! He gets a job as the driver of the wife of the guy is suspects and says a fake name. He’s learned how to be subtle.
And then he gets to the place he wants to investigate and immediately just runs into rooms he’s not supposed to be in and gets caught. But he’s learning.
Anyway, Vincent read reports in the newspaper of a guy who died claiming he’d seen alien things in the headquarters of Vikor Industries. Vickor is run by George Vikor, a former war hero who has sold out his species and is working alongside the aliens. Posing as her driver, Vincent befriends Vikor’s neglected wife Sherri and brings her up to speed about the invasion and how her husband is a traitor to humanity. They try to reason with George, and it seems like it could work. George lost a leg in Korea, and got a plate in his head, and was lauded as a hero. But still, when he got back home things weren’t enough for him. He may be the owner of a successful company, but it isn’t enough. The Invaders can let him be a ruler of what remains of humanity in the world they conquer. That power is what he needs.
Anyway, thanks to some truly impressive quick-draw-shooting Vincent manages to escape. He leaves a phone message with Vikor Industries thanking Vikor for helping him escape, which the aliens believe and they kill Vikor. Unlike last episode, this time Vincent does report to the FBI, though the aliens have cleaned up Vikor Industries, so there remains no proof that any of it happened. Sherri survives, though. Another in a growing list of potential allies for Vincent, or potential victims for the Invaders.
I need to note that the head villain in this one is pretty good. He’s even got a cool name: Mr. Nexus. He survives at the end and would be great as a recurring opponent for Vincent, but having spoiled myself that we don’t get returning characters for a long time yet, I guess it wasn’t to be.
For the record, they do have the finger thing again in this one. Good.
Okay, this time the aliens are growing something in a big vat! Those dastardly dastards!
The episode opens with a cop pulling over a car that turns out to have Invaders in there. And they’ve got something so shocking that when the cop see it, he basically goes catatonic. What did he see? Well that’s a secret.
Our hero David Vincent hears about this cop going comatose and figures “that sounds like alien work” and comes to town to investigate. He arrives, once again using his full name and not at all pretending to not be an anti-Invader crusader. He winds up teamed up with the cop’s friend, other cop. The first cop dies, so now the second cop gets to be called “the cop” for the rest of this.
Anyway, Vincent gets absolutely almost killed by an alien who know who he is, but the cop saves him and witnesses the disintegration that occurs when the alien dies, and thus learns about the aliens. So, once again, Vincent has an ally in the form of an authority figure. They go on an investigation and learn that the Invaders are taking over a sea lab. I don’t need to go through full details, but fisticuffs at the sea lab result in a fire that burns the place down and foils the aliens’ plans. The cop and another ally who works in the lab both survive and Vincent has two more allies in the world. He really needs to make a team of these people. But in this one, the cop offers to accompany Vincent to the FBI and Vincent basically says “Nah.” I would guess the idea is that he’s worried they have infiltrated the government, but it sure isn’t consistent with how his life has actually been going.
What were the aliens’ plans in the sea lab? Well, they’re doing an experiment that simulates primordial conditions in a vat so they can grow new life, but also they seem to be growing their leader? I guess. Considering I’ve started taking notes while I watch, I’d like to have a better idea, but I don’t. Blame the episode, not me. Or blame me. Either way. What’s important is we learn the aliens also have some sort of hypnotism technology and, even more important, we see some more of the pinky fingers being used to spot aliens. I thought that might have been forgotten, but it hasn’t!
Hey, Internet! This website has been active for TWENNY YEARS TODAY!
I don’t remember the exact details of what I was putting on here two decades ago, but I made this post in 2006 to announce that the Book of PDR was beginning. That’s this very website! It’s twenty years old.
It’s some kind of accomplishment, surely. How many still-active websites are older than two decades old? I don’t know! Someone probably has a general idea, but I don’t. But probably not a whole lot of them. I have to assume The Book of PDR is now a venerated old pillar of the Internet community.
Haiku!
Book of PDR.
A most important website.
Twenty freakin’ years.
Here’s to another twenty years and another twenty visitors to the site.
