Superman 75th Anniversary In Animation

Gee, it only took them until October to finally do a tribute to Superman’s 75th. This is an animated short produced by Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm (or the guy who failed Superman and the one who got him right respectively) going through the events of Superman’s mythos. Obviously they couldn’t get them all but they got some good looks in.

The events featured are (for the uninformed)

• Action Comics #1 and early Superman comics
• the Fleischer/Famous Studios theatrical shorts (using one of my favorite shorts, with the robots)
• Adventures Of Superman (with a terrible rendition of George Reeves)
• Silver Age comics
• Super Friends (not as good recreated the Hanna-Barbera style as the Fleischer work that inspired Timm’s DC character models–also I would have gone with the later shows with the Wonder Twins since they were better than the Wendy, Marvin, and Wonderdog stories)
• Superman Versus Muhammad Ali
• The Christopher Reeves movies (so obvious is the rotoscoping on this that it looks more like a filter was used with the original footage instead of actually drawing it…which may be what they did)
• Superman for the Atari 2600 (which wasn’t very good)
• Death & Return of Superman, including the heroes that came out of that
• the whole “electric Superman” storyline
• the animated series Timm worked on (no surprise there)
• A nod to Smallville in what looks more like a tribute to Kingdom Come
• The New 52 version (and the best he’s ever looked)
• And sadly ending on Man Of Steel because Zack Snyder…they should have ended (as much as it pains me to admit) on the New 52.

Of course Notintheface would have liked to have seen more Lois (and I wouldn’t mind less Beepo) and she should get some attention because it’s her 75th as well. (Did anybody complain at Superman’s 50th?) I understand why the serials and the other TV shows weren’t included but I still would have liked to have seen them. Still, it’s a very well done tribute…if not more than a little late from DC since we fans all did our tributes a long time ago.