GOAT animated capeshit or radio drama with wiggly paper dolls?
I love the style of the old fleischer superman shorts, but it's hard to deny the animation is way less dynamic and interesting than some of the Popeye material of roughly the same period. Don't get me wrong, there's tons of movement, but there's something 'off' about them that makes me prefer Batman TAS as the definitive animated capeshit
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>inb4 clickbait title
Superhero media in general didn't get good until the 2000's.
>but there's something 'off'
It's called rotoscoping. Max Fleischer invented it
I forgot how great these old superman cartoons looked.
The animation is a little jerky but the frames are beautiful.
Too bad the stories are boring as shit. It's all so generic and hokey.
>generic and hokey
It's a cartoon form the 40's
animation's weird like that. the actual movements of the human form are less satisfying when animated than fake-ass bouncing ball physics dreamed up by windsor mckay at some 20s new york laughing gas party.
could just be that the beats are written to appeal to the literally-slower 1930s moviegoer brain
Yes and? It's a shit period for the character. 'Muh nostalgia' doesn't justify it.
>1940s cartoon
>Lois legitimately action girls it up with a tommygun against an armored car full of gangsters
>only needs to be rescued when the train actually blows up
>meanwhile, getting above-the-fold bylines on the front page of the Daily Planet
Is Lois Lane the most progressive female character of all time?
It's a product of it's time, it's generic to a modern viewer because people have been using these things as inspiration for decades.
>most progressive character of all time
>still doesn't have solid outlines
kill all men
Fine but there's no reason for fans today to watch it or pretend it has any relevance on the character today. In fact I think most writers work hard distancing themselves from the old dreck.
>pretend it has any relevance on the character today
It's the reason Superman can fly. The animators didn't want to keep drawing him leaping tall buildings in a single bound
People watch it because of the quality of the animation
The animation is inferior to modern cartoons.
>it's not like Steven universe so it's shit
>all hail calarts
Go munch on dicks
It's true though. Steven Universe, Pearl vs, Adventure Time all have better and more vibrant animation. To say nothing of the more progressive and nuanced characters that go beyond 'strong white guy punches minorities.'
Then don't watch it if you can't appreciate it on its own nor for what it did in the time it was made. It's not a big deal.
>muh overwrought silver-age mythologizing
>muh edgy nolan-tier PHIL 1001 monologuing
>muh reddit 'le quip man' downy jr.
Wartime superhero stuff catered to a black-and-white morality that let us progress in the world instead of just navel-gazing. We should look back at these old cartoons and learn from them, nostalgia-blinders aside, because there's a lot of positive propaganda value in narratives like this
>Pearl vs
Freudian slip?
>because there's a lot of positive propaganda value in narratives like this
It's one of Miller's inspirations for DKR. He acknowledged a few Golden Age people
I love SU, and I gotta say you're full of shit. Not even Garnet v. Jasper can match any fleischer short.
A lot of Lois adaptations are actually really consistent and well done. Its probably one of the most overlooked things in cape adaptations, but Fleischer, 50's Adventures of superman, Donner movie, Lois and Clark, STAS, all are good adaptations of her. Which is what makes the Snyder version stand out even more.
>Too bad the stories are boring as shit. It's all so generic and hokey.
Supes basically fought nothing but gangsters, mad scientists and the Axis through his early years. Prankster and Toyman were the closest things he had to supervillains and they debuted around the same time as the final shorts. Mxyzptlk was two years later and Brainiac was 15 years after the last short.
didn't end up seeing MOS, but everyone talks about the lois character and how she a shit.
Why? She's always been a competent sexpot, and that's what all movies have been rushing to include these days to score political points
*tips fedora*
i'm not even gonna spam the calarts meme -- i like wiggly woogly le arm noodle animation sometimes.
it's just that you're wrong
just gracefully admit you haven't done your history homework user.
no need to resort to the le hat meme when confronted with superior taste
>IT'S GOOD BECUZ IT'S OLD!
>I ALSO EXCLUSIVELY READ GOLDEN AGE COMICS, WATCH BLACK AND WHITE MOVIES, AND BELIEVE THE SHADOW IS SUPERIOR TO BATMAN!
>CAPESHIT XDD
>Steven Universe shitposting
This thread is cancer.
>EBERYTHING HAS ONLY IMPROVED EVER
>SOON WE WILL HAVE ENTERTAINMENT SINGULARITY PARADISE
>What is progress?
>man why do we have computers, I was perfectly satisfied with muh radio and telegraph
Why are you people even responding to this faggot?
It's obvious he's baiting.
hard to deny that way more human effort went into many mid-ish 20th-century cartoons and shorts, as they were, even when corrected for inflation, more lucrative than cartoons today.
computers are great. they make animation better. they also make animators lazier. but, then again, so do drastically lower salaries and a ghettoized market for animation.
Don't know why I'm responding to your shitposts, but it's an argument worth having when drunk watching popeye.
>used to watch these shorts when they would air on Cartoon Network
>these types of cartoons have been pushed to the bottom of Youtube where kids might never even have a chance to see them
I realize cable TV as a whole is sort of dying but there really should be a channel like classic CN that isn't the cesspool Boomerang turned into
>I know there's actually money reasons for things, BUT ACTUALLY THOSE EVIL COMPUTERS THO.
The issue isn't money. It's the sheer fact that animation has progressed from your fucking grandfather's generation to encompass new styles and new ideas beyond 'angry white dude punching robots robbing banks'.
>tfw no teletoon retro anymore
i always had that shit on, even if it was mostly worthless hannah barbara IPs
It's a fucking cartoon from the forties its a godsend we got what we got
Im actually going through the Superman animated series, and its pretty good so far.
I always forget that in the 90's cartoons were still allowed to say things like "Oh lord", "Oh my god!" and use actual guns.
DCAU a best
She stopped being competent
It's was a damn good show with one of the best iterations of supes problems for me was how much they nerfed him each episode. He was barley bulletproof half the time and was extremely inconsistent with his strength
He always appears to be weaker at the start of a fight, then eventually just decides to rip all the robots in half like paper instead of continuing to let them shoot him. I know it's just so they can have a fight scene that lasts for more than five seconds, but it looks like Superman just forgets he's Superman sometimes.
Personally, I think Superman works better on a smaller scale, like the radio plays. Honestly, the radio serials have become my favorite version. Admittedly largely because Clark isn't constantly fainting and passing out and shit.
He starts off being a guy that gangsters are legitimately afraid of and warn each other about. It's kind of awesome. Eventually, sometime during WWII, they tone him down some, but it becomes easy to understand why people put up with him. He's not a mincing coward, he dives head-on into danger sometimes and has the respect of the people he knows.
Lois, meanwhile, isn't a huge fucking turbocunt the way she is in the gold and silver age. She isn't constantly berating Clark, plotting to marry Superman, or coming up with complex schemes to prove that Clark is Superman. She tries like, once, when someone convinces her to and she's so horrified by the results that she turns her back on a personal hero of hers for putting Clark in so much danger. A far cry from the woman who'd lie and abuse people just for the sake of a story.
Jimmy's a normal kid. He gets pushed kinda hard in early stories, but they back off on that a bit. He's not Superman's Pal with a special signal watch and he can actually do things without Superman helping him.
Perry actually has a personality beyond "The Boss." He's a blustering buffoon sometimes and tries to be a hardass, but he's got a heart of gold and does is best to make sure his people are cared for, even if it means his death.
As far as Superman goes, there's no superdickery involved. There's a weird thing in the early stories where he tries to remain an urban legend, but they abandon that after a few months. They give him some actual limits on his powers (he has to breathe, he has to eat and drink, he has to actually try to use his super-senses in order to use them, no accidental eavesdropping), and most of his time is spent unraveling the story's mystery rather than insane super-feats.
>and new ideas beyond 'angry white dude punching robots robbing banks'.
What does that have to do with quality of animation?
Funny thing, most shows weren't allowed to use real guns back then. DC shows, Gargoyles, and Swat Kats seemed to be the exception rather than the rules.
It's like, why all the cops in Spider-Man: TAS use laser guns.
I feel like the "world of cardboard" speech should've come much earlier to explain the character, rather than the very finale of the entire DCAU to bullshit why he could suddenly knock Darkseid around like a ragdoll.
Nigga, the animation quality is better than SU. Is your answer to any suggesting an old thing is good "n-n-nostalgia"?
There were only guns in DCAU because the writers of BTAS fought hard for it, saying lasers would go against the 40s vibe of Batman and playing off the executive desire for Burton Batman money.
Then I guess it was grandfathered in for the rest of the animated universe
When it comes to progressive, the old Superman shorts were years ahead of most other media.
For instance, there was one where a native american wanted NYC back, and was laughed out of the meeting. He vowed vengeance, and, while most stories of that time, and even up to the 70s and 80s, that would mean he would call up some ancient native magic. He would have also dressed in traditional native clothes, and speak in broken english.
But, progressive cartoon that it was, not only had him dress in modern outfits, and speak english perfectly fine, he also used science to attack people, and not magic.
I remember when Avengers: EMH was doing the WWII sequences. They were told that they could either have Nazis or period-appropriate weapons. One or the other. Not both.
So instead of having Nazis with lasers, they had HYDRA with machine guns.
This short was the hypest shit. Also the one where Supes punched a fucking laser.
>it's better because it's old despite the leaps and bounds of superiority in animation between today and then
...
Sounds boring. Where's the SUPER in Superman? Sounds more like 'Vaguely Above-Average Man.'
And if new animators are not using those new techniques to their full potential then their animations will not be superior.
I guess the Room is objectively better than every movie released before it, huh?
there are in fact people on Sup Forums who really think this way, like Kamen Rider General on /m/. They WOULD argue The Room is better than Citizen Kane based solely on one being newer and do it entirely meaning what they say.
In the first (or was it second?) issue of Action Comics, Supes is ambushed in a high rise by a bunch of guys with tommy guns. His immediate response is to wrap their guns around their necks and toss them out the window.
From a technical standpoint? Sure. The cameras used in The Room are going to be better than cameras used years before.
Sup Forums is literally no different
people here believe 2007 was the singularity where entertainment suddenly became good and everything before it is trash
>people in filthy cancerous generals believe
Ftfy
>complaining about animation quality
>bitches about the short's plot
goddamn son
Do you think the Room technically better than Jurassic Park, user?
Well, that's the thing. I'm honestly bored of stories where he solves things by creating a thundercloud by rubbing his hands together, instantly creating straw-filled dummies that look like Clark Kent and throwing them off a cliff, extinguishing a volcano by cutting the top off a snow-covered ice-mountain and plugging it up, and cutting a planet in half to reattach it to a new planet. Or trading blows with another superhuman that's so powerful they rock the foundations of Heaven and Earth.
There's just as much entertainment value for me when he shorts out the electricity in a room, then fucks up all of the machinery as Superman before reassuming his guise as Clark Kent to smugly inform the guy who's holding him hostage that his scheme won't work or hearing him struggle to figure out how to PROVE that this other dude is a murderer. There's plenty of super-feats. He tears apart cars, clears out mines, carries airplanes, moves massive trees, etc. It's just that the feats support the drama, rather than the drama centering around the feats.
Boring. Basically has nothing to do with Superman.
not enough frames for the animation to be fluid and trick the brain
You've never listened to the radio show. It's kind of like dubbing a comic bad just because you don't like the logo.
why would Superman solve murders
autism truly knows no bounds
Because it makes for good news.
Too bad your obsolete medium has nothing to do with comics, cartoons, or Superman. Just a character given his name for cheap attention.
But a boring Superman story. Could you imagine if they tried to actually publish that in a comic? DC would lose even more sales.
Well, given that the radio series invented Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Kryptonite...
>Superman doing journalist shit or solving crazy murders in the DCEU
>Boring
This isn't some plain ass regular mystery story son
This is a super mystery
They did do it fairly often in the 90s. I remember one issue where Superman spends the entire time looking for this one hot dog stand guy who was his friend. Turns out he'd run afoul of some criminals, so they tied a cinderblock to his feet and dropped him off the docks.
It was a good story.
Names.
This fucking short made me NOPE hard as a kid.
an extreme retro superman comic with great oversaturated artwork, no flying, no stupid bloated silver-age loremongering, and delicious 1930s retrofuturism?
This would outsell literally everything
I swear I was just thinking of that one
god forbid we get anything like that again, I don't even think capeshit does small-scale self contained stories at all anymore
Boring compared to what? Do you like Jesus Superman?
this is a great post because it cuts to how to make superman stories work.
Remember the time Supes fought Godzilla?
And personalities. And one of his only weaknesses. Seriously, why don't you try out a few episodes to see how they feel?
archive.org
Start with the fifth entry. The first four are just audition tapes, they get adjusted and repeated starting at The Baby From Krypton.
The latest that I remember is Warren Ellis' run on Moon Knight. I'm sure there's something more recent.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the decompressed storytelling has altered the storytelling landscape of comics.
The Superman that actually matters and has mattered for the past 35 years or so? Yes.
They're generic radio mysteries with a vague superhero angle.
I refuse. I'm not going to listen to a fucking radio like a 90 year old or a fedora. This isn't Sup Forums.
Yep. There was a short where he fought Nazis too.
It passes the time when you're driving or exercising. Or cooking.
But, hey, if you don't want to give it a try, that's your deal.
That doesn't mean it's good
>my attention span is so fucked in its limitations that anything slightly different than the norm literally triggers me
I used that line of reasoning when a coworker asked me how I'd make a Superman game yesterday and how I'd tackle the problem of his strength. I said all the lowest level grunts would be Intergang dudes with lazer guns or robots/aliens. They wouldn't just be regular, boring mooks.
>still responding to it
Man this guy is cool.
There's been a couple of Supes stories like that in the Ne52 where they're just one-off, self contained stories. They involve supervillains but he doesn't win by punching anything.
You can tip your fedora about listening to decades old dead mediums all you want bro. Bet you're a real pussy destroyer when you bring up your love of irrelevant media from your great grandparents day.
Remember how the Superman radio show was instrumental in taking out the KKK
there's something poignant about Supes biggest weakness being cause the actor was sick
It doesn't hurt to try to offer him some entertainment. It's his choice, but if he'd tried it and enjoyed it, hey.
I much prefer when kryptonite just makes him extremly sickly and struggling to keep cool, rather than falling over in pain and instantly losing his powers. It feels cheap.
Notice how he still hasn't responded to this.