Here's a video from Cartoonbrew.com about the early/forgotten history of Superman in animation before his Tv show in the 1950s. For those keeping track it's about 7 minutes long, but I still found it to be a lot of fun. Lately I've been thinking about my love of super heroes and how I really seem to enjoy "off model" or parody versions even more than the genuine article, so it wasn't a huge surprise when I liked the Little Lulu portion of this piece the best. Maybe someday I'll get around to doing a post on my love of parody and cipher versions of my favorite heroes. The video opens with some clips from the Fleischer studios Superman cartoons of which I have been a big fan of since I saw a bunch of them on Nick at Night back when I was like 11 or 12. I used to really hate Superman but the slick animation and darker look really made me like the Man of Steel.



Notice the differing "S" shield with the black background instead of yellow. I have quite a fascination with the evolution of the symbol, and I've bought a few Superman comics just because they've used that "S" symbol as opposed to the standard version.




It was this look that inspired the Superman from Mark Waid and Alex Ross' Kingdom Come, the first time in comics form I ever liked him. Yes, I followed the Death and Return of Superman and had an issue here and there, but during that I was hoping the Cyborg would turn out to be the real Superman, but when Supes returned with a new mullet in tow my hopes were dashed of ever really liking him. Over the years I've read some really amazing Superman comics that have opened my eyes to the character, and I consider him one of my all time favs now. Enjoy the video.