FLEISCHER STUDIOS SUPERMAN CARTOON

Superman was the Big Bang of comic book superheroes, the great red and blue outrush that shaped everything that followed. Fittingly the Man of Steel was the first superhero to make the big screen, too, headlining 17 glorious animated shorts in the early 1940s. They’re some of my favourite Superman stories: Technicolor wonders bursting with all the energy of a speeding bullet. To bring Krypton’s last son to the screen Paramount Pictures approached Max and Dave Fleischer, the team behind Betty Boop and Popeye The Sailor. At first the Fleischers baulked, daunted by the prospect of stepping beyond Toontown’s traditional comfort zone of cutesy animals and rubbery physics. This was something new, a blockbuster gig demanding greater realism and spectacle than animated cinema had ever attempted. Most cartoons cost around $10,000. Paramount bankrolled the first Superman short for $50,000.

It was worth every dime. Even now, eight decades on, the Fleischer Superman cartoons still stun with their pure artistry. This is a Metropolis saturated with colour and shadow, a vivid Art Deco fantasia that vibrates with life. The animation is astonishingly fluid, the camera angles frequently dynamic: panicking in the streets, we peer up at towering, flame-spewing robot menaces; hurled into the sky we gaze down at a blur of clouds and skyscrapers. Superman is the stocky, incorruptible strongman at the heart of it all, punching out death rays to save a ’40s belle Lois.

These masterpieces eventually fell into public domain, reduced to a shabby VHS afterlife. But you’ll find their influence in everything from the shadow-draped noir of Batman: The Animated Series to the art of Frank Miller and Alex Ross.

But here’s their true legacy. Until these cartoons Superman had simply “leapt tall buildings in a single bound”. The Fleischers found that too tricky to animate. So as a shortcut for their overworked team they gave him the gift of flight instead…

Nick is faster than a speeding deadline.