Superman: The Mechanical Monsters (1941)
A mad scientist sends an army of giant robots to rob banks and loot museums across the city, until Superman traces the thefts back to his hidden lair and dismantles the operation.
Directed by Dave Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Superman: The Mechanical Monsters established the character’s Art Deco visual style and is credited with introducing Clark Kent’s phone-booth costume change to any medium; its lavish, fluid animation is still cited as a high point of the studio’s output.
Background
Superman: The Mechanical Monsters was the second of the Fleischer Studios’ influential series of Superman theatrical cartoons, continuing the Art Deco visual style and heavily rotoscoped, fluid animation that distinguished the series from other cartoons of the period. The plot follows a mad scientist who sends an army of giant robots to rob banks and museums across the city, until Superman traces the thefts back to his hidden lair.
What to watch for
Watch for the robots themselves, elegantly designed and animated with a weight and menace unusual for the period, and for how directly the short contributed to the character’s visual mythology: it is frequently credited with popularizing Clark Kent’s phone-booth costume change, an element that was not originally part of the comic-book source material. The Fleischer Superman shorts as a series are still cited by animation historians as a high point of theatrical cartoon production in the early 1940s.
