Like most kids cartoons, this one begins with a corpse being dumped into a swamp.

Saboteurs! It’s saboteurs again. But this time we’re not told they’re foreign agents or anything, they seems to just be Guys Who Do Crimes. It’s weird for this era of these shorts, but it’s what we’ve got. Anyway, whatever this conspiracy is, they seem to have got into a pretty good position at the Metropolis Munitions Plant. I’d expect that’d be a pretty good position to use for various crimes, but their plan is to blow the place up. I guess they know their business better than I do.

Lois goes undercover at the plant to see what’s going on, and naturally this ends with her being chased through the rafters and getting locked in a torpedo to be killed. Fortunately, Superman is on the case ready to save our intrepid reporter and the munitions plant. It’s pretty standard stuff, without even a rudimentary sci-fi twist to make it more interesting to me. And I have to admit that the animation, while still good compared to plenty of cartoons I’ve seen from the decades since, has fallen a bit since the Fleischer era.

Going into this one I had no strong memories of which it was, so when we see the apparently-elderly night watchman I did think to myself that he looked like he was built exactly like Clark I didn’t realize how right I was. But, of course, I’m no Lois Lane. She sees through the outfit easily. Apparently there’s nothing that Clark could put on that would disguise him from her.

One thing I did remember (though I didn’t know which short it happened in) is Louis. At one point in this cartoon Clark thinks he’s talking to Lois, but there’s actually a goofy little guy called Louis standing there. It’s not especially funny now, but I bet at the times this had kids rolling in the aisles. Let’s bring Louis back in the next Superman movie, people.

To: Meat
Re: Bologna

Look, obviously I respect you, Bologna. My ancestors, I assume, used to stalk the plains and fields, hunting wild bolognas and bringing them home to cook them over the fire that they put in their caves which is a bad place for a fire because it would fill with smoke but probably my ancestors were idiots like that. And then we domesticated the bologna and now it grows in farms where we’re cruel to it to save money because cruelty is always cheaper than not cruelty so we fill our world with cruelty like we filled our caves with smoke. That’s why I respect bologna manufacturers and why I definitely know what kind of meat it is.

And I accept that we spell it bologna but people call it baloney. That’s fine with me. If anything, it makes this one particular kind of meat have one interesting thing about it. You can trick people by asking them to spell it and if they get it correct they are secretly spies. Spies can’t help it because they’re idiots like that. That’s why I accept the discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation for bologna.

With all that said, my issue is this: I don’t eat bologna, so you might as well not make it anymore. Thanks!

With underwear,
Patrick D Ryall

It’s the first Part Two episode of the show! Things continue from the previous episode! How novel!

As established last time, David Vincent and his friend Mike Tressider are dealing with the latest plan by the Invaders. The aliens are flooding earth with radiation except for one place in Scandinavia, so all the world leaders are now having a meeting there to figure out what to do about it, and the Invaders plan to blow up the place and wipe out all those leaders. But on Vincent and Tressider’s side is Ellie, an Invader who thinks the massassination plan is going to backfire and make humans aware of the Invaders so she wants to stop it.

So our heroes get to travel down a cool elevator into the EURAC (“European Allied Command” apparently) base and do espionage kinda stuff. The main Invader baddie in this arc (Alquist) is working for Halvorson, the leader of the host nation which I don’t think is identified, and it turns out that Halvorson is aware that Alquist is an alien! They’re keeping it secret for typical Men In Black reasoning (they think people will panic and riot), but Halvorson believes Alquist when he says that his people are willing to work alongside humanity.

The most important things in the episode are these: 1) There’s an indoor jeep chase. Sure, the production values of the chase are nothing special, but it still happens. 2) Halvorson sacrifices himself to save the day. Imagine a politician willing to do that. 3) My favourite part is Vincent and Ellie debating the merits of their species. Vincent is all “Your people can never know love” and Ellie is like “But we also don’t know hatred. Isn’t that better?” This debate never really comes to a resolution, though we are obviously supposed to side with Vincent, but Ellie points out “Your way is no better.” I love getting glimpses into the way the Invaders see the world, so it worked for me.

In the end, Mike Tressider doesn’t survive the episode, but Ellie defies my expectations by making it. I foresaw her as a probable “tragic female sacrifice” who dies for the cause, but this show is better than that. Instead, after they succeed at saving the day, they part by acknowledging that they are not friends and if they meet again they will be at cross-purposes. She probably does not show up again on the show, but it’s neat that she’s out there.

This episode is full of shocks. First of all, it is the first (and I believe only) two-parter of the show, so we know David Vincent isn’t getting it all wrapped up in time for the end of the episode.

Okay, here’s the setup: radiation levels around the world are increasing except for one place in Scandinavia. It’s all part of an Invader plan to get a bunch of world leaders together for a summit meeting (like in the title) so they can kill them all. Over the course of the episode we learn that they have Invaders in positions high enough in the various world governments that if they wipe out the leaders, they will be able to take over. A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies.

But maybe not. It turns out that not all the Invaders like the idea. David Vincent goes on a date with a woman, but it turns out she was an Invader sent to kill him, but she doesn’t do it because she needs his help to stop the plan! That’s right, Vincent is working with the Invaders again! But unlike the Invader who fell in love with him way back in the Mutation, this sexy lady is NOT interested in Vincent. She thinks the plan is stupid, it would draw attention to their actions and the radiation ruins the very world they are trying to conquer. She makes it clear that outside of his help on this, she has no desire to see David Vincent continue to live. He feels the same way about her.

Also in the episode is a friend of Vincent, Mike Tressider, who is America’s largest defence contractor. It’s treated as if he and Vincent have met before and dealt with Invaders together, but I think that may have been an Untold Tale because I don’t think we know that story. Anyway, the Invaders hypnotize Mike and he shoots Vincent, fortunately only managing a flesh wound before snapping out of the mind control. His connections to the government will be what allows him, Vincent, and Ellie the Invader to get into the summit meeting next episode.

We also get a human villain in the episode, a General who has sided with the Invaders because he sees them as strong and powerful and that’s what he values. He gives a good little speech about how Mike could have been such a great scientist to help the world, but he sold out for money from the government in the military industries. It’s a nice little bit about humans and their ability to betray their own kind, which I think it excellent in this kind of story. It’s also, I think, the third time a military guy has betrayed humanity to join the Invaders. It speaks to the kind of society the Invaders offer to those they ask to work with them.

But the single most shocking thing in this entire episode comes near the beginning when we learn that David Vincent is, and presumably still has this whole time, still been doing architect jobs. It really felt like he stopped that as soon as he began his quest to fight the Invaders, but no, we see him working late into the night. It explains how he has money to do anything, I suppose.