Max Fleischer's Superman

[The Laughing Fish]

One important factor that this thread hasn't talked about is rotoscoping.

Max Fleischer is recognised as the inventor of the technique - which traces and sketches over live action imagery to create animation. Till now, I was under the impression his innovative technique was introduced in his Superman shorts. I was wrong - according to this video, rotoscoping was introduced way back in 1919.

Nevertheless, rotoscope was used in the Superman shorts; a man called Karol Krauser modeled after the leading character. He was a star wrestler in the 1950s.



Source: https://www.supermanhomepage.com/movies/movies.php?topic=dyk-karolkrauser

[The Laughing Fish]

The new Superman and Lois TV show paid homage to Fleischer's Superman.

I see the Boy Scout/Donner purists praising this scene as "everything Superman should be", and how the costume shows the trunks can still work in film and TV. I don't think many of them have seen the Fleischer shorts, because Superman in those cartoons was too busy brawling with criminals, monsters, cultists and WWII Axis soldiers. He had no time to smile and make cheesy comments.

I would love to see a 1940s-esque Superman film in the style of Fleischer. Too bad the costume was wasted on Tyler Hoechlin.

[thecolorsblend]

Superman in that era was a two-fisted, square-jawed man of few words. He was a no-nonsense New Dealer Democrat who wouldn't think twice about busting as many heads as necessary to get the job done. And maybe a few extra, just to keep everyone else in line?

As you say, people seem to have a weird romanticized view of what Superman was actually like in the late Thirties and early Forties but that view has not much to do with reality. And even when you get into the late Forties, a lot of Superman stories were just downright weird.

Basically, in that video Hoechlin's Superman is paying homage to a version of the character that's technically never existed anywhere but in people's imaginations. It's just odd to me.

Poking around Twitter, suddenly everybody's a Superman expert. Ordinarily, I have no interest in measuring dicks over who knows more about Superman. But, as you say, since most of those yahoos decry Cavill's Superman, I'd love to know what their bona fides are that I should care what they have to say about Superman.

Here's everything you need to know Hoechlin as Superman:



Looks to me like Welling is at least six inches taller and much broader in the shoulders. Maybe we should call the other guy Specklin instead of Hoechlin?

Bottom line, I don't plan to watch this show. Snyder aside, I don't trust modern Hollywood with Superman.

[The Joker]

I recently found a youtube channel where there was a 'restoration' of the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s. Adding in videos explaining the process, and the differences between the many editions that have been released thanks to the series being public domain.

I haven't fully explored this project, but felt it's worth leaving a link for in this thread.

[The Laughing Fish]

Superman in that era was a two-fisted, square-jawed man of few words. He was a no-nonsense New Dealer Democrat who wouldn't think twice about busting as many heads as necessary to get the job done. And maybe a few extra, just to keep everyone else in line?

As you say, people seem to have a weird romanticized view of what Superman was actually like in the late Thirties and early Forties but that view has not much to do with reality. And even when you get into the late Forties, a lot of Superman stories were just downright weird.

Basically, in that video Hoechlin's Superman is paying homage to a version of the character that's technically never existed anywhere but in people's imaginations. It's just odd to me.

A person who is much wiser than me reckons this is an example of the Mandela Effect, a bizarre social phenomenon where too many people misremember events that only happened in their minds, but not in reality. I'd say the misinformation surrounding Superman's history by gatekeepers within the industry exacerbates the problem. And let's face it, willful blindness is another culprit. It's one thing to have a preference for how a character should be portrayed. It's another to ignore the character's history just to cling onto your narrow-minded point of view. Dishonest "fans" like that have done far more damage to the brand than people who genuinely don't know any better.

Looks to me like Welling is at least six inches taller and much broader in the shoulders. Maybe we should call the other guy Specklin instead of Hoechlin?

As much as I don't like to body shame anyone, even your most hated Superman actor of all time - Brandon Routh - looks more imposing than Tyler Hoechlin. Let that sink in.

Bottom line, I don't plan to watch this show.

Same here. I can't sit through Hoechlin playing a happy-go-lucky caricature any more than I saw in his debut appearance on Supergirl and the two Arrowverse crossovers. The same goes for Elizabeth Tulloch's quippy Lois Lane. People who say those portrayals are great are probably the same crowd who thinks the MCU Spider-Man is the best.

As for trusting Hollywood to adapt Superman again other than Snyder, it will definitely take someone with balls to go against the status quo to do something creative. But in this climate, it seems rather unlikely. Even though I mentioned that I would love to see a period-piece Superman movie in the style of Max Fleischer, I can't help but suspect it will be heavily sanitised for the PC crowd. As a matter of fact, I'm rather surprised that gatekeepers haven't turned against Fleischer's legacy, for the way Superman's adversaries are depicted. They love to demonise Snyder with slanderous accusations of "rape fetish" and "Randian this and that", but they don't seem to find the character designs of Japanese villains or tribesmen as "problematic", as they like to say.

BTW, I personally don't have a problem with the animation because I know it was a product of its time, I'm only talking about how these know-it-alls could've perceived these cartoons to suit their agenda.

I recently found a youtube channel where there was a 'restoration' of the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s. Adding in videos explaining the process, and the differences between the many editions that have been released thanks to the series being public domain.

I haven't fully explored this project, but felt it's worth leaving a link for in this thread.

Thanks for the link. I knew the later editions had restored the colour to make it stand out more and vibrant, but didn't know about the other minor details.

[Dagenspear]

The new Superman and Lois TV show paid homage to Fleischer's Superman.

I see the Boy Scout/Donner purists praising this scene as "everything Superman should be", and how the costume shows the trunks can still work in film and TV. I don't think many of them have seen the Fleischer shorts, because Superman in those cartoons was too busy brawling with criminals, monsters, cultists and WWII Axis soldiers. He had no time to smile and make cheesy comments.

I would love to see a 1940s-esque Superman film in the style of Fleischer. Too bad the costume was wasted on Tyler Hoechlin.

What does saying the shorts still work have to do with how the Fleischer version acted, in the shorts?

[Slash Man]

I recently found a youtube channel where there was a 'restoration' of the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s. Adding in videos explaining the process, and the differences between the many editions that have been released thanks to the series being public domain.

I haven't fully explored this project, but felt it's worth leaving a link for in this thread.

Thankfully DC was still is putting out their definitive version of the cartoon from the original negatives; it's flawed in some ways, but most public domain works lack a definitive source in the midst of a sea of low quality transfers.

The thing about public domain works is that most will simply languish once the original studio loses the rights, since I guess the studio sees too much competition to make it worth their while to maintain and release these works; the early Universal Monster movies come to mind where these films can be easily accessible, but look like trash. There is no way Universal would put the same care and attention into those that they put into the overhauled restorations of Dracula and Frankenstein.

I think Superman may have escaped this fate simply due to the ongoing success of the brand. You can say the DVD restoration isn't perfect, but you can't deny this is the best these have looked since the original filmstock. But is there enough interest for an HD scan of the film to be profitable? That's questionable (if they already did scan it, HBO Max is probably the best platform).

The minor changes to the Superman cartoon are comparable to the 4K scan of the original Batman movies where they switched out the original soundtrack. Might be a dealbreaker for some. I wouldn't go as far as to compare it to the Star Wars films, which had a lot more changes to them.

[The Laughing Fish]

Various people working in animation and comics still owe their imagination to Fleisher's Superman to this day.

"Even back in my first jobs in animation, we studied those," said Kevin Altieri, a writer/producer of Batman: The Animated Series, which established the template for DC animation back in the 1990s. "When I came to Warner Bros. and I saw the demo that Bruce [Timm] had done incorpoating all those tricks and techniques, I said, �?wait, we're doing Fleischer Supermans!' and they said, yep, that's the mandate from above."

"The first time I saw a Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, well, to say it changed my life is both accurate and an understatement," said John Semper, who produced the award-winning Spider-Man: The Animated Series in the mid-1990s, among other things in his 40 year career. "It was the personification of everything I wanted to see in an animated cartoon, everything that I wanted to someday make in animated cartoon form. It was just brilliant and stunning. It's a rare instance of something being done that just is perfect right at the moment."

"These Superman cartoons had the smooth-flowing, higher-quality look and feel of the great Disney cartoons," said comics and animation historian Arlen Schumer, who produced a webinar on the series. "I later learned that was the result of the Fleischers' combination of painstakingly hand-painted cel animation and rotoscoping (animating over live action film). So you could feel Superman straining to exercise his super-strength, struggling against bigger opponents; you could feel his physical effort as he literally leapt tall buildings in a single bound. And he flew like we imagined he flew in our dreams, both gracefully and dynamically. He was grounded in our recognizable reality. He was relatable."

"As someone who's worked decades on superhero cartoons, discovering the Fleischer Superman animations in my youth had a profound effect on me," said Shannon Eric Denton, a writer/producer who has worked on animated series featuring DC and Marvel characters. "Even though I started in comics, I quickly transitioned to animation where I think I've been chasing that high Max and his Fleischer Studios gave me all those many years ago."

"These things were just rare gems," said Semper. "I couldn't even believe that they existed. So imagine my little kid mind sitting in front of a TV screen, black and white. And suddenly one of these magnificent Max Flesher Superman cartoons comes on, and it was just like something from another planet. It was hard to even understand how they got made."

"They influenced everyone. Disney, Miyazaki, everything that's come out of Warner Bros. and DC since the 1990s," said Altieri.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230523004220/https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2023/05/18/these-superman-cartoons-changed-animation-now-they-look-better-than-ever/?sh=76df10fa435e

[The Laughing Fish]

I found this on social media: Fifty Who Made DC Great - the official book that celebrated DC's 50th anniversary back in 1985 - acknowledging Fleischer Studios' contributions to making Superman a pop culture icon.