Although 1966 and 1943 both seem like a long time ago, while my dad had not yet been conceived when the Fleischer and Famous shorts were made, he and my mom were getting busy during the debut of the next DC Comics animated series, The New Adventures of Superman. In other words, there was quite a bit of time between series, 23 years to be exact. In the interim, Superman had officially learned to fly.
The New Adventures of Superman consisted of 68 short (6 minute) segments packaged together during animation blocks of programming. Since some of the segments combined for double length adventures, there were actually 60 complete tales during the series run. In 1966-7 the segments were aired with segments from The Adventures of Superboy. During 1967-8, the Superman segments aired as part of the Superman / Aquaman Hour of Adventure (which included Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom, Teen Titans, Justice League, and Superboy segments). In 1968-9, Supes was packaged with Batman in the Batman / Superman Hour.
Animated in the fine cost cutting Filmation tradition, The New Adventures of Superman took quite a hit in animation quality from the earlier big budget theatrical shorts. And as zany as some of the first incarnation plots were, Superman's New Adventures upped the ante.
At present, only the first 36 segments comprising the series' first season are available on DVD.
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Episode Count: 0017
Series Count: (0 of 68)
Before you get any further, you may want to watch two Looney Tunes: Super Rabbit (1943) and Stupor Duck (1956), two great parodies of the Fleischer films; and a George Pal Puppetoon from 1945 called A Hatful of Dreams. (The only clip you'll find online of this one is here: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/secretsuperman.html)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kurtis. I actually looked unsuccessfully for the whole episode of A Hatful of Dreams and was hoping I could track it down at some point in the future. As for the other two you mentioned, I do have definite plans to visit them down the road along with other Warners parodies such as Just-us League of Supertoons. PLEASE, continue to chime in if there are other episodes you think I have overlooked.
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