Superman (1941)
A mad scientist trains a death-ray on the city from his mountain lair, and only a reporter who can bend steel and outrun a locomotive can stop it. The first of the Fleischer Studios shorts, rotoscoped and shadow-drenched, that fixed how a flying superhero should move on screen.
“Faster than a speeding bullet” was written for these cartoons. They also gave Superman flight — in the comics he had only been able to leap.
Background
This short was the first in a series of seventeen Superman cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios, known for their heavy use of rotoscoping and dramatic, shadow-drenched art direction that gave the character a more grounded, cinematic look than typical cartoons of the period. Bud Collyer voiced Superman, using a distinctive lowered pitch to signal the switch from his mild-mannered reporter identity, a vocal trick that became a standard convention for the character afterward.
What to watch for
Watch for how the cartoon establishes phrases and abilities that became permanent parts of the character’s mythology: the narration’s description of him as faster than a speeding bullet dates from these shorts, and the decision to have Superman fly, rather than merely leap great distances as he did in the original comics, was introduced here because the animators found leaping difficult to animate convincingly. The series had a considerable influence on how the character would be depicted in later films and television.
