The Early Animated History of Superman

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The early Superman animated history from the 1940s to the end of the 1980s. The history of the Man of Steel's animated past began with the Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s starring the voices of Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander as Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Both had worked on the radio series and would go on to voice Superman and Lois once more on the 1966 Filmation series, The New Adventures of Superman.

Fleischer and Filmation both used the rotoscoping method, which was created by Max Fleischer. The early 40s Superman was heavily influenced by World War II which was going on at the time. By the end of the 40s, a movie serial would be made starring Kirk Alyn, but for the flying sequences an animated cartoon version of the superhero was used instead of a stuntman or the actor for most of the scenes.

The Justice League was first shown in animated form by Filmation on the Superman Aquaman Hour before Hanna Barbera took over in 1973 with the debut of the Justice League on Saturday morning's Super Friends. That show would rule the 70s and 80s as the main superhero show of it's time.

For the Super Friends Danny Dark would be the voice of Superman. The series would create a lot of memorable episodes, including "Return of the Phantoms", "History of Doom", and one episode which actually put Superman up against what appeared to be Pac-Man.

After the Super Friends ended, Ruby-Spears produced a solo Superman series in 1988 that only lasted for 13 episodes. The series theme was inspired by John Williams movie theme and the concepts for the show were inspired by the John Byrne comic book revamp of Superman that had happened a couple of years earlier.

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:25 The Fleischer cartoon shorts
• 2:15 The rotoscoping method of animation
• 3:34 Filmation 1966 Superman television series
• 7:21 Hanna Barbera's Super Friends
• 10:16 Ruby Spears 1988 Superman cartoon series
• 13:32 Conclusion