Hey, I might as well do posts about the old Superman cartoons, right? Here’s one:

This is the first one, and it’s about the time Superman got to punch a death ray beam. It begins with the standard “up in the sky” routine, but not the “amazing stranger” speech. In the place of that expository intro, we get a slightly more detailed look at Krypton exploding (seen from space) and then a storybook image of the orphanage where infant Clark was brought. Then we move on to the “truth and justice” portion. The most notable thing to me in this recap of the origin is how it goes with the old notion that the job as a reporter is done to keep Clark in a position where he can learn about disasters and things earlier and be Superman at them. I’m on the record as preferring that Clark actually care about journalism, not just use it as a way to be Superman more efficiently. In any case, in this story, Clark definitely doesn’t use the job that way.

Lois is here too. Perry assigns Clark to help Lois investigate the destructive Mad Scientist who is plaguing town, but Lois brushes him off. She wants to handle it herself. Clark protests, but Lois is off, nothing he can do. A point in favour of Lois being a cool action hero in these shorts: she just immediately goes and pilots a plane to follow up on her lead. Sure, she is immediately captured once she reaches the bad guy’s lair, but I’ve often said Lois Lane is not a damsel in distress because she’s a princess being kidnapped or whatever, she’s out there in distress because she’s actively doing things against the villains. That’s better.

The villain of the piece is only known as the Mad Scientist. He’s the archetypal Superman Mad Scientist foe. Superman has lots of those and this is one. Other than that, we know very little about the guy. We better understand the motives of the average villain in Looney Tunes than we do this guy. His threatening note to the city mentions “those who laughed at me” which is pretty standard Mad Scientist background stuff. I’d love if we could claim this guy is the Lex Luthor of the cartoon shorts universe, but I don’t know that it could really be done (though Lex, like this guy, would have a lair in an observatory at a later point, and also this guy is balding pretty hard). His plan, to destroy the city with his “electrothanasia ray” does not feel very much like something Lex would be into, but who can say? I will say that “electrothanasia” to me indicates a much more peaceful attack than the pure destructive force this ray deals out. Unless, I suppose, they really laughed at him a lot.

Important News: The Mad Scientist’s sidekick is a cool bird! There’s just this cartoon bird who hangs around with this guy and helps him do his laser revenge plot and stuff. What’s this bird’s deal? We don’t know! And it gets away at the end too. Superman does not capture the bird!

Speaking of Superman, he’s doing his thing. All the cast here is taken from the radio show, which I love, so they’re good and Jackson Beck as Clark is very welcome. As I said, we’re told that Superman here is using his job at the Planet to be ready when Superman is needed, but after receiving a letter that the Mad Scientist intends to strike at midnight and knowing that Lois has gone out to investigate and he considers that dangerous, Clark is just hanging around in the office when the time comes. You’d think he’d have been in costume, ready to go.

I do like that Superman is knocked down by the electrothanasia ray, showing he’s not omnipotent, but then he wills himself back on his feet and struggles his way up the beam to stop it. He doesn’t step out of the beam and let it keep destroying the city, he becomes a lighting rod for the damage, and fights his way to the source.

And the bit where Superman throws the Mad Scientist in the prison reminds me of the time Captain Sunshine threw the Monarch into the prison yard without any due process or anything, which is amusing.

I guess that’s it for this one. I’m not here to review them, just to think about them. I’ll try to get to the next one next month, I suppose. Until then, let’s all imagine what the cool bird got up to after escaping.