There was nothing wrong with the long hair and times do change. You have to adapt to the changes in the world. 20 years later you can cut the hair short and pull it off as a new series.
@@WarsunGames LOL so right do you know how superman hair grows? how long it takes etc... There was nothing wrong with him having long hair, I say this with hair down to my arse..... But yeah nah that is not the look for superman. I mean Superman once the humans die out etc or after years alone it made sense, but other than that why would he grow it out, it would just get it his way as he flew and or fights.
@@EvilEvilMonkey I am not gonna say it has to be really long now. But i am saying for a new generation, you can let the hair grow a bit. Then later cut it. If people had bowl shaped hair cuts how awkward would he look if that was the style? How many comics would you sell? Sometimes you have to adapt. Or find middle ground is what i am saying.
In a fanbase that completely gushes about BTAS, Batman Beyond, both JL Shows being legendary and Static Shock being an overlooked gem, it’s nice to see STAS get some love. Especially when it’s being seen as the middle child of the DCAU for years.
I personally believed that the over-abundance of robots in the 90's (and 80's) was the fact that the hero could get away with a higher degree of "animated violence" as opposed to attacking a person.. They still found ways around it (like the "flashing punch" in the Batman Animated Series)
Spider-Man TAS has no closed fist violence on another human being, Spidey included. He can throw them, web swing into them, and web them up. But no punches.
@@mrrodriguezHLP Yea. I think the action aged well despite the punch embargo. I just rewatched all of it a year ago or so. It helps that 5 songs(joking) it had really fit each scenario haha.
While I generally liked Batman the Animated Series and Justice League better, this is still a solid show. I love their handling of Clark (he’s awkward but confident and very good at his job) and ESPECIALLY the castings (Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown in particular will always be Darkseid and Luthor to me). Overall a really great show!
@@DSan-kl2yc one of my favorite episodes was The Late Mr. Kent. I think it perfectly shows that despite all his power, Superman doesn’t just become Clark to hide, he does it because he loves being Clark
Yes! Ironside's Darkseid spoke normally, yet each word carried an innate menace. So, in the rare instances where he showed anger, HOLY CRAP, he was terrifying. Brown was smooth, knowlegeable, and confident (as someone as successful as Lex would be). With Lex, you often didn't know you were in danger until it was way too late.
I really do think Sasha could succeed doing more voice over work. She reads clear, gets a good emotional range, has a number of distinct voices and characters, and has great comic timing. I could see her doing a cartoon show or an audio book.
I only just noticed that Lois has violet eyes and almost always wears purple. Supermans’ most prominent colors are red and blue. Mix them and you get purple. I think the designers made this color choice to communicate that while Superman wants to have a relationship with Lois, while he wants to be human, while he wants to blend in, Superman is stuck in the red and blue, kryptonian and human, Kalel and Clark Kent identity crisis. But, as Lois is always there for him, his hope of becoming part of humanity is always nearby, even if just out of reach.
I knew red and blue make purple, but I never really put that much thought into it. It's kinda like Master Mace Windu having a purple blade in Star Wars. The real reason is Sam L. Jackson wanted to notice himself easily on screen during a far out shot in Attack of the Clones (or so I've heard). But looking at it from the colors' meanings perspective, the character is better with combat than Force using (blue blades) and taps into the dark side (red blade) while staying in the light (thus getting purple).
I always thought he was *too* weak. I mean (almost) no one was hoping for the ridiculousness of the SIlver Age version (sneezing away a solar system, pulling planets with a chain, time travel etc) but in STAS he was even weaker than the current version in the comics. I wish he had been more on the level of other Tim Daly-voiced animated Superman projects that came later, like Public Enemies or JL Doom.
@@sabishiihito yeah I didn't like how he struggled to lift helicopters and got knocked back by bullets. I did like though that villains like metallo and parasite actually gave him a hard time instead of just "actually superman is so strong that if he was serious he could defeat them in 1 second". Superman should be super powerful,but not a method for writers to show off how strong he is. He should struggle with villains hence why he even has a Rouge's gallery lol
@@sabishiihito same, it annoyed me. There was this one time where he took on a torpedo head on and it hurt him. When he has super speed and all that stuff. This superman version has been the version people see in the mainstream hence why they find it hard to believe that he'll beat goku, or any overpowered beings from other stories.
The schuster fleischter style was so iconic, my grandfather (God bless soul), watched Batman TAS and Superman TAS and acted like a kid before he passed. He was so glad the style was adopted and as a comic and animation fan, he felt like he went back to his childhood.
@@Pink7omy Sups charges in blindly without any plan or though of the danger or consequences (Superman Returns). Batman being human, has to rely on stealth, cunning, and careful planning, with everything he does, before taking action. Remember when Superman said (B/S Public Enemies) he's not used to all this sneaking around? Batman faces characters equal to, and often stronger than he is. Therefore, he has to get to know his enemy and their vulnerabilities before taking action. Otherwise, he wouldn't survive for very long. Even Brainic (Brainac Attacks) called Superman was "nothing but fists."
@@krane15 none of this proves your point. Superman does have a personality! Just because his is opposite from Batman, it doesn’t mean he has “less personality “. Also read the comics that are cannon…Superman‘s brain is a super computer. That means he is more intelligent than Batman on many levels. Batman is Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne may be smarter than most people,,,however his brain isn’t close to being Albert Einstein. And many times Batman gets help from Gordon, Robins, and of course the man - Alfred Pennyworth- his butler. Superman however usually does everything by himself as he has no sidekick or butler. Superman is more independent if you really think about it. Superman has many times outsmarted many villains and other superheroes. Batman is only human like you and me. I like Batman a lot also, and he is very smart and athletic…but I’m being realistic here. Plus just because Superman is alien, that doesn’t make him “less” relatable. In fact he is more relatable than Batman. He’s not a billionaire, he works a normal job, he has family, etc. Superman is a good guy with a good heart.
This is peak Superman for me. It’s the reason I love the character so much. It’s so classic and the show has aged like fine wine and even stood out from its predecessors because a lot of audiences haven’t watched most of it.
There’s always going to be a part of me that’s perpetually angry that STAS didn’t get to have a season redeeming Superman and instead basically ended with Darkseid’s ideological victory over Superman. He got to explore that more in JL/JLU, but it really needed to be in the formal show.
Agreed. Still hoping somehow Bruce Timm and Co could think up one more season focused on Superman gaining back the people's trust cause i read that would've been the idea if another season was greenlit back then.
Here's hoping this revival of BTAS has sume nuggets of this to act as glue between STAS and JL. Superman's redemption arc in the eyes of the public with really big bad villian -- Solomon Grundy or the Ultra-humanite (perhaps seen switching bodies) would be good choices. I wouldn't go too overboard with this -- it is a Batman show, after all!
@Will N I always envisioned General Zod making his debut in DCAU animation as possibly the main villain for superman of the season that put man of steel to the test of in the public eye. I LOVE how Zod looks the comics I have now and would love it if they made one more season now. I prefer Darkseid, Mongul,Mongol,. Not make appearances since they wouldn't be seen again till Justice League season 1 & 2 in canon. I have books with pictures where they could probly make episodes out of. For example would be Mr. MXYSPITLIK powers are taken by Parasite who then turns Lois into Darkseid/Lois and Jimmy Olson/Brainiac hybrids. Another would be Livewire saves Superman's life by jumpstarting his heart after Brainiac almost kills him and she shocks him with like overload shock. I wondered if I should mentioned these ideas to Andrea Romano if she's gonna video chat again.
Gotta say, part of the reason I love these cartoons is that I love Art Deco architecture, just gives such good vibes. I prefer my Batman and superman with art-deco in any format.
I'm glad that we got this video on STAS, I feel between BTAS and the JL era, it tends to be underappreciated, despite how much of the DCAU it defined with its designs, crossovers, and tones. Frankly to answer your question I'm glad this is the version of STAS that we got. Modernizing everything from the 40s by way of 60s by way of 80s aesthetic if BTAS helped make things more consistent and honestly more grounded moving forward, I'm glad we lost the black backgrounds that tended to make things blend into each other. Though with this video, I'm curious if this is the start of seeing more STAS content on the channel. Cause even though Zeta project is the meme, its the show I've wanted to see you guys talk about the most.
This version of Superman has inspired the way I draw my own superheroes. I loved the Shuster and the Fleischer styles but neither of them have made a huge impact on me as the current version did. This style of Superman will always have a place in my heart.
Michael Ironside's performance as Darkseid is the most amazing thing in this show. It's almost on par with Hamill's performance as Joker. Just wish we had seen more of him.
It's characters in the DCAU like Darkseid and Gorilla Grodd that really make me miss them not being gruff and grimly voiced like hard nails when it came to their voices.
There's an undeniable charm to the Fleischer-inspired designs for the characters, and I certainly would have loved to see them in motion (they surely could have used the multiverse to do it in an episode), but on the whole I'm glad WB put their foot down and practically forced the creators to give the show its own identity rather than pursue any of the other avenues Timm and co. were thinking of. It's a clear example of how limitations breed creativity. Had they had their own way and do the Fleischer thing the show might have never been appreciated as its own thing (kind of like Superman Returns isn't as beloved due to its refusal to move away from the shadow of Christopher Reeve's films), and if they had rushed to do Justice League before developing the character of Superman better the results wouldn't have been nearly as memorable as the actual JL series was. It's important to remember this. People always get mad when a studio forces an artist to follow their instructions rather than giving them freedom but sometimes artists can and will go off the rails if they're not pushed in the right direction. Artists are people after all, and they can make mistakes.
lol image a episode of STAS where clark travels to an alternate world in the original fleischer style designs for STAS, and its just him fumbling his way through a classic fleischer style story. Honestly the biggest problem with returns was how it saved all the interesting things for the sequel. Kevin spacey just imitates gene hackman's silly lex and the finally is somehow boring and nonsensical, since how is clark able to lift a kryponite continent while being stabbed with kryptonite and having kryponite exposed in front of him, especially since lex's goons could beat him with a small amount of exposed kryponite? Why not just have the continent be made out of regular kryptonian crystals and have clark only be stabbed with kryptonite so it makes a bit more sense? Compare that to the sequel which would've included brainiac, a fun villain who has somehow never appeared in a movie yet, and bizarro, and character that 3 and 4 had the perfect opportunity to adapt yet never did.
I remember watching the show in the living room with my dad when I was five. The series made me love Superman! What made these shows so great is that they didn’t talk to kids, they were written to be mature enough for adults to enjoy them too and their was actually character development. On top of that, they perfectly captured the essence of each superhero in the DC Universe and respected their lore. Warner Bros should have learned from them.
I'll be honest, this video is an eye opened for me. I was convinced the birth of the superman animated series was completely painless and smooth, simply an "alright we're done with batman, now let's continue with superman." To younger me, the two series looked so incredibly similar in ever possible way, I just assumed they had the exact same team behind both series
One thing that gets lost in discussions of STAS is the absolutely AMAZING voice cast for this show. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown are THE definitive versions of the characters for me and millions of others.
Agreed. With Andrea Ramano as voice director, she took a different approach to the DCAU by getting character actors or actors that weren't like usual voice actors (the Jim Cummings', Frank Welker's, E.G. Daily's and Billy West's of the world, who are really great actors in their own right and capable of drama when not making us laugh). Actors like Ron Perlman, singer Paul Williams, Dana Dalaney, Clancy Brown as you said, Tim Daily, Kevin Conroy, etc. gave the voice acting a more prime time tv drama/comedy feel than what one expected from animation at the time, especially for young preteen audiences. The fact they were all in the same room like a radio show so they could bounce off each other also really helped. Good stuff!
The voices for these from this and JLA are the permanent voices of them in my head. BTW Clancy Brown's Lex is the best personification of Lex in anything I've seen.
Superman is a character that's extremely easy to screw up. Most people who write him just go "hits VERY hard" and then call it a day. And then there are amazing stories like "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way" and the adaptation "Superman vs the Elite" that really gets the character. Comparing Injustice to the former is a grave injustice as it's just "Superman but evil by grief!" While the former is "what if Superman was intentionally acting the way he is and what would happen if he chose a different path?" And that's a far more interesting question than the latter, which I personally find to be boring garbage, and makes for a far better story.
@@paulrasmussen8953 The movie? The movie even less got the essence of Superman as it ended with him making a choice Superman would always choose to never take. He would find another way since if he takes the decision he's no longer Superman. Watch the JL episodes "An Alternate World" before Superman kills Lex Luthor he sighs as he knows that he'll never ever be Superman after this. It's even expressed explicitly in Superman vs The Elite after Superman ditches his moral shackles and two people watching the event on television with one of them asking, "Is that Superman?" and the other person replying in silent terror, "not anymore."
@@nielsjensen4185 thats what i mean. I hate mos. Heck how his dad died is so stupid. A tornado!? What Superman 78 got right was having John Kent die from a heart attack. Something that Superman can't fix.
@@nielsjensen4185 the movie was moreso a modern retelling of the hero in a more cynical world. Had they allowed the director to do his 5 movie arc with superman, you all would've had the status quo superman by now. Take mcu Spiderman for example: he wasn't defined by a tragedy like the character was in the comics until this recent movie. He was handed everything and always had a way out of situations that he usually caused whereas in the comics, Spiderman was just a victim of circumstances and always had to fight between doing the right thing. We finally got a more comic book accurate Spiderman by the end of the recent movie with a comic book accurate costume to boot. People should have more patience and allow others to tell a story before scoffing it all off and derailing a universe.
@@nielsjensen4185 you also forgot to mention that he didn't want to snap zods neck but it was that or a family gets burned by eye lasers. He even cries after killing him, but that's not enough for some people or hard-core DC fanboys who want the status qou and never for things to change.
To me, every iteration of this Superman show sounds really fun and cool in very different and unique ways from each-other, and I would've loved to have seen all of them, but I'm totally happy with what we got. As a massive Superman fan with a very specific vision for how I'd like literally every character in his mythos to be handled there's obviously a ton of things that I'd do differently if I was in charge, and I cannot pretend that certain BTS comments from Bruce about how "boring" Clark's villains are don't drive me up a fucking wall to the point where the experience with the show is a bit soured for me, but I'm well-aware that there's literally no-one who could 100% capture my exact vision for the character, and when I keep that in mind I think STAS had a lot more hits than misses. As an aside though, God DAMN do I love that Brainiac design; I definitely would love to see it repurposed for something else some day.
It’s SUPER close to the little kid Brainiac from the “Gods and Monsters” Superman short, I almost threw that in there but it felt more opinion than fact-I couldn’t find anything to confirm it, and good luck getting a hold of Bruce Timm, haha
Same. I can’t help but think that half the reason why STAS suffered early on was because Bruce Timm didn’t have the same type of passion for Superman’s villains as he did with Batman’s villains. That early Braniac design was infinitely more cool than what we got.
This was really a good coverage. It's understandable how difficult it was for them coming off from Batman: The Animated Series. I can't help but notice that because they did Batman before, it felt automatic for them to follow that path but ultimately saw the distinction: dark vs bright. And good for them to realize that. Superman: The Animated Series was really a good show and a good complement to BTAS.
I read years ago that the Joe Oriolo “The Mighty Hercules” from the early 60s design was inspired by Superman’s look. So in my mind it all came full circle in STAS. Plus “The Mighty Hercules” was one of the earliest cartoons I remember as a kid in the 60s. I have a fondness for that show.
STAS is phenomenal, so I wouldn’t trade that for anything. That being said, it would be fun to see a Brave and the Bold-style Superman cartoon! Maybe exploring a different era of characters than the silver age stuff that BtBatB, but a sort of spiritual successor with Superman in the lead could be fun (and show off Clark’s personality quite a bit)
The Brave and the Bold were kiddy versions which I never liked. Even as a kid they seem infantile to me. I had friends that would laugh at them and I just stared at them wonder what was going on in their heads. They were always so predicable.
@@krane15 Don't worry, you'll appreciate what the Brave and the Bold did a lot more when you're older. There's something special about the golden age style of that show that i probably would've disliked as a child too, but when things get dreary shows like that are what you need
Can agree on a first glance that B: TBatB feels a bit too childish, but darn, as you progress to the show, you'll be surprised at how much depth and passion project-feeling it has. And then there's the deaths scenes. By gar, how is this show still deemed "childish" when it actually has some memorable and even tear-jerking deaths?!
Nice, extremely thorough work as always, James and co., with this "Herculean" effort of a RUclips video! You think you've heard it all about the DCAU until WDB throws out a term like "Ocean Liner Deco." Wow, color me impressed! Definitely just one of many great tidbits in this entry, and can I just stress how much of an all-around good guy Dan Riba seems? Such a fun dynamic having him as a "phone-a-friend" when making a video like this! Stay schway, guys!
Personally, I always liked The Superman show over the Batman one. I admit BTAS is great, but STAS hit me in all the right spots. And, the Darkseid stuff is some of the greatest work the DCUA ever did. That Finale.......*chef's kiss*
I can't imagine a studio today going "You know what? Let's not rush into a big crossover-you've gotta take time to establish character." It's the exact opposite of what happened with the Snyderverse, and it's just mindblowing to hear that Warner pumped the breaks back in the day!
As a comic nerd going on 30. Rewatching and completing these DCAU series has been just a awe inspiring experience. The adult themes in a kid friendly format. You really appreciate the creativity and ingenuity of Bruce, Dan and rest of the crew. They really valued these characters. I hope James Gunn and his partner can put the love and care into these wonderful characters.
My favorite thing about STAS is the dynamic relationship it sets up between Superman and Darkseid for JL. Superman having pure hatred towards Darkseid was awesome and seeing Darkseid actively trying to piss off Superman made him such a great villain.
This popped into my recommendations and I'm just blown away. Not only was this an amazingly comprehensive look into the show's production, but the production on this video is fantastic. I really appreciate that you cite all your sources in the quotes, but also that you got different people to voice the sources. I can't think of many content creators that do that. I had no idea how troubled this show's production was behind the scenes. I'd never heard of the previous failed plans like setting it in the 40s or that Brainiac design. This was seriously fantastic and you earned yourself a new subscriber. Thank you.
I really like what the cartoon ended up being. It really encapsulates everything I love about these characters, while employing that amazing animated series style. Fantastic job with the video!
This retrospective made me really appreciate and admire STAS a lot more. From what could've been to how the series look was finalized, I've never been more happy and grateful for this take on the Man of Steel and the history behind it.
This was a beautiful video, I might be a Batman fan but I did grew up watching Superman: The Animated Series. As a grown-up who started to develop a love and appreciation towards the Man of Tomorrow thanks to Man of Steel, this made me smile a lot. You've just earned a subscriber, I've been enjoying the videos especially the many stuff involving Batman.
I think the Lemillion arch of my Hero covers how I always wanted to see superman. Giving up everything to save one person. Being vulnerable and giving his all after the fact. Its really touching and inspiring. Something I havent felt for superman in a LONG time
Wow, this is an incredible video on a subject I never considered before! Stylish editing, solid writing, strong voice-overs. . .Excellent job, everyone!
I'd like to see other aesthetics if it was in some kind of Infinite Crisis movie. Just as Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill have become THE version of Batman and Joker for most of us, Bruce Timm's DCAU design has become THE version for me. Other styles are good, but my brain always comes back his design. Thanks for the excellent video. I've learned much.
I’ll always remember the Mr.Mxyzptlyk episodes those were really fun and creative, the fun unique upbeat animation styles, and the voice casting. Superman, Lex, Darkseid. There’s more but this is the first thing that pops into my mind. Superman’s character in it was amazing too
One thing I really liked about this show was that it actually made Clarke/Superman funny. Its just as much fun watching Clarke trade barbs with Lois as it was watching Superman punch stuff.
STAS is my BTAS. I was too young to understand how good BTAS was, but my uncle really pushed me to get into super heroes. When STAS came out we had something to talk about and share together, he was more of a Batman/Spider-man fan, and I loved Superman. It's something that I will never forget in my childhood, and Tim Daily will always be my Superman :)
I might prefer the 40's-like, more batman the animated series related design, but I am happy with what we got. This style has influenced how I draw for as long as I remember.
I'm 35 years old. I became really really interested in Marvel and DC in 2010. Everything from video games, movies, shows, & ESPECIALLY DC Animated Movies & shows! As someone who suffers from depression, anxiety, & at times social anxiety, the world of superheroes really really helps me out with a lot of that! There's so many good stories that are just about how hard or how good life can be, AND with acceptance and guilt. Striving to be a better person and knowing that life is hard I really look up to the superhero lifestyle. And when I'm feeling down or sad or depressed I can read a comic or watch a movie or a show, and they make me feel a lot better. AND I DEFINITELY THANK YOU WATCHTOWER DATABASE! I don't really have any friends that I can talk about this stuff with in person. So being able to listen to someone talk about everything that I would want to talk about in person is really really helpful and heartwarming to my life! The DC Animated Universe, with there shows & movies is one of my favorite things that has to do with superheroes :)
I can sympathize with their struggle to "get it right." I have always found Superman and Spider-Man to be the hardest comic characters to draw. Spider-Man's costume is about the details, the webbing, the poses. But Superman is SO iconic, that the despite the simplicity of design, it's very difficult to "get it right." There's almost always something that just doesn't fit, just a wee bit off...
This is fantastic! Superman TAS is the one I grew up with and my definitive version of the character. I learned so much about the production of this show that I had no idea about. You guys outdid yourselves. Excellent work!
More please…. I worked at everyone of the impacted studios from the 1990’s to late 2019. I saw so much production up close. I talked to so many of the folks who worked in these shows. I did IT. I stumbles across this and had to watch it none stop. You did not disappoint. Awesome! My hats off and I will contribute.. this was so cool!! Well done!
Well done. I had no idea about most of the history of this show, though it was such a big influence on me at the time. This along with BTAS were required watching for me. I put off actual life events to keep up with episodes. Thanks for the great work!
I had the shows on DVD and the special features like commentaries and interviews with Timm, Dini, Reba, Alan Burnett, Dan Didio, and a few of the voice actors gave some good insight to what was going on behind the scenes. Very fascinating to listen to. This Superman cartoon is a great show to look at, has a lot to like about it. As you can tell, I'm a fan.
This was so fantastic. One of my favorite videos you guys have done! I can’t imagine the DCAU looking any other way. I’m not sure I’ll ever like an animation style more than the post-BTAS animation style. Its a very timeless look!
Love these longer, documentary-type videos. Your content is always pretty top-tier, especially when considering this is all for an incredibly niche topic, so to see some potentially wider-reaching content filling that niche is always a treat. I feel like videos like these have the potential to randomly explode in popularity due to the documentary-type approach to covering topics a lot of people might vaguely remember from their childhoods. 10/10, good shit
The amount of praise batman and justice league get is great and deserved. But, Superman TAS is damn near perfect and so consistently good. I think it deserves so much more recognition as it easily stands as my favorite of the DCAU, and if superman were a more popular character in modern times I think the show would be held in much higher regard
I grew up watching BTAS, but I only just recently watched through the rest of the DCAU. AND OMG IT'S ALL SO GOOD! I can't believe I waited so long to watch it.
Gonna do a full watch of it myself on HBO Max. I missed out on Batman Beyond, only seeing one or two episodes. Time to go through the four horsemen of DC cartoons (Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond and Justice League, inlcuding unlimited). Shows like this laid the groundwork for similar dramatic cartoons like Disney's Gargoyles, and it's influence mixed with anime worked for shows like Exoquad and Nickelodeon's Avatar shows.
This show is special to me because it not only served as an introduction to Superman and Superheroes for me when I was a kid in Nigeria, but it also introduced me to the glorious world of Jack "The King" Kirby!
I remember that MIGHTY HERCULES show from when I was a little kid. One of the reasons I liked it so much was because Herc looked like Superman! He even had a similar color scheme. And Newton, Herc's centaur sidekick, used to remind me a little of Jimmy Olsen.
Holy crap, I’m less than 2 minutes in and I’m blown away by the animation and editing this video uses to bring various iterations of the character to life and transition between them.
i remember as a kid i didn't like Superman (that changed inmensely later), but when i saw this animated show... man, i tough it looked damn cool, and i watched it a LOT, and it was on great part because of the artstyle, so hell yeah, they did an insanely good job! thanks for that to everyone involved.
STAS's aesthetic is so good, a fusion of the futurism of two wildly different eras. The grandiose art deco architecture and roads in the sky conceived by 1940s artists, and the angular and seemingly achievable technologies pitched by 1990s concept artists. The show is really the best of both times. And we cannot discuss this show's art without making note of the fantastic efforts undertaken by the partner animation studios in Japan and Korea. Even _Ghibli_ got in on it, animating extensive sections of The World's Finest as part of an agreement with TMS. STAS truly is one of the best-animated shows of all time, though not without its hiccups. There's a number of sequences where you can just _tell_ the artists put on their own flair.
I think there were two main things that helped this version of Superman stand out: 1. The writing and character dynamics were simply fantastic. 2. They properly limited how powerful he was. While some villains like Toyman and Livewire still didn't stand a chance against him in a direct fight, it was still entertaining to see them try or use other methods. Meanwhile, the powerful space alien villains gave him a lot of trouble, especially Darkseid.
Great video! Amazing to see more of that early concept art. That Brainiac look is so striking. I would have loved to have seen at least an animation test in that style.
STAS is fantastic. I'm brazilian and I grew up watching this show on broadcast TV in the early 2000's. So, this was my first Superman. It defined my perception of the character and his world more than anything else. I have all these memories from watching it as a kid, from a great origin story in "Last Son of Krypton", to how cool Brainiac looked as a villain and how interesting it was that he was tied to Krypton's destruction, to the cool threats Superman would face like Maxima, Livewire, Parasite, or Lois' pet monkey from her childhood, to the absolutely shocking and devastating events of "Apokolips Now" and "Legacy". I fell in love with it again rewatching it a few years ago. Everything, from design, to writing, to characterization and voice acting pulled me in again. The love is not just nostalgia: It's a really solid show that holds up. DCAU Superman is my favorite version of the character, and my favorite character in the entire DCAU. I love his arc throughout the shows, from starting off as this idealistic character, to facing adversities he can't simply defeat by punching, losing his pedestal status and trying to regain it throughout the next few shows, to facing his darker side and emerging victorious and stronger for it. Speaking of arcs, this is the most pivotal show of the DCAU. Not only it was this show that started expanding the universe, but it also started a lot of the story arcs that would be fundamental in JL/JLU, such as everything Darkseid related, Brainiac's continuing search for knowledge and twisted partnership with Lex Luthor, a growing mistrust of superhumans that would be the motivation to the founding of CADMUS, these being the main examples. And to answer your final question: while it's interesting to look at preliminary designs and concepts and wonder what could have been, I'm so glad that it pulled from various sources of influence but wasn't a copycat of any of them. That it did its own version of the character and the world he inhabits, that it did its own thing instead of chasing the glory of past successes like the Fleischer show. That one already exists, show me something new. And boy, they showed me. This show is what made me fall in love with the character and the team involved with creating it deserves all the praise in the world. Also, I wish STAS' Metropolis was a real place that I could visit because it looks fantastic with its sci-fi otherwordlyness. Great video, guys, and keep up the good work. Happy holidays!
Nice work! For a minute Lois’ purple eyes made its way into the mainstream comics! There is a thread on Instagram talking about what a good Superman Video Game would look like.
As a kid, my introduction to Superman were the 1940s Fleischer shorts. They had a realistic aspect to them that I hadn't experienced with any other animated show. Re-watched them some years ago and boy, do they hold up!
Still thank you soo much for this documentery! One year passed by and its still so true, the animated series nailed it. With its love, soul character, witch even an big boudget Hollywood version decades later cannot reach. And they still dont get it. I hope for over two decades now that Warner would focus on the heart and soul of the story board like these guyes did it at this 90s golden glory version of my teenage days. And still now, staying a growen hairless old boy, im never get tired to watch this series! It helps me to keep soul in days like these! And still insprires! I really hope and its ovious im not the only one, Warner Bros /DC(-Studios), would remember to understand the story, they ones understood so well to tell and would bring us a live action movie version with a focus way more back in that direction and away from that tragical super rough man who forces justice and more lost hope as if he is a symbol of it. It isnt about to be realistic in the first place. I wish theire would be more dreamers with influence in that, but the way things are looking nower days, its all about cash. And they wonder why their new soul less big screen babies wont fly! Whyyy?? Even you have the best matched perfect actor. Thank you for that documentery and i wish someone would send it to guyes J. G. Ore people you make the big screen movies. And really "hope" that they would care. Cos a Movie with form and character like this kids cartoon series from the 90s would really be a symbol of hope, especially today.🤞💫💫💫
Until I watched this I had no idea that I was born on the same day the first episode of this show came out. And I never would have known if I hadn't binged your channel. So thank you for that! I really am enjoying this channel and learning how my childhood favorites came together like this.
That’s awesome! You should check out our podcast “Jump on the Bat-Wagon” where I’m taking my friend Brian through the entire DCAU for the first time-we start STAS on Friday!
I like that you actually shouted out the quote readers in this video, and even included their icons. I think this is the first time I've seen a video where anyone's done this. Please, keep it up. And I'm very happy with the Superman show that we got. It was a very entertaining experience with a bunch of compelling, likable characters, and it's sadly far too easy to forget that that actually exists in the DC outside of the comics since Zack Snyder seems to be what people think of as Superman. Superman is not Ayn Rand.
It was a really well-done show. My only gripe (and this was a gripe back when I watched it as a teenager) is they *really* depowered Superman for this show. There were scenes where he'd struggle to stop a car or lift a small airplane.
To me that's the biggest challenge with these superheros, and especially Superman, since he's the most powerful. If he's too powerful there's no struggle, and without conflict, there's no story. That's the reason he holds back and takes a lot more abuse than he has to. If he used all his strength and abilities he'd end up killing a lot of villains, and we know what would happen once that gets started.
I always thought that this was a younger Superman who wasn't at peak strength or at full mastery of his abilities. Also, Justice League openly stated that Superman has to constantly pull his punches so he doesn't kill people. Then we got unleashed Superman when he and Darkseid duked it out b/c he knew that Darkseid could handle it. Man this series was GOLD.
I am really happy with what we got. This is and always will be my Superman. These shows were so good and I love what they eventually grew into with the whole DCAU.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Enjoyed this documentary style? We did a whole piece on Dwayne McDuffie a little while back-check it out! ruclips.net/video/l67RPuGLLhs/видео.html
I didn't know Freakazoid was released in US before Superman. I discovered F! in 2003 when it was released in France on Cartoon Network
quick question the red and blue super men when he split in 2 there was a tv show of that right ?
There was nothing wrong with the long hair and times do change. You have to adapt to the changes in the world. 20 years later you can cut the hair short and pull it off as a new series.
@@WarsunGames LOL so right do you know how superman hair grows? how long it takes etc... There was nothing wrong with him having long hair, I say this with hair down to my arse..... But yeah nah that is not the look for superman. I mean Superman once the humans die out etc or after years alone it made sense, but other than that why would he grow it out, it would just get it his way as he flew and or fights.
@@EvilEvilMonkey I am not gonna say it has to be really long now. But i am saying for a new generation, you can let the hair grow a bit. Then later cut it. If people had bowl shaped hair cuts how awkward would he look if that was the style? How many comics would you sell? Sometimes you have to adapt. Or find middle ground is what i am saying.
In a fanbase that completely gushes about BTAS, Batman Beyond, both JL Shows being legendary and Static Shock being an overlooked gem, it’s nice to see STAS get some love. Especially when it’s being seen as the middle child of the DCAU for years.
Don't forget about Zeta Project, never seen it but lots of people pretend it doesn't exist.
@@wisconsinking323 The Project Zeta Is Not Real.
Hell yeah
@@wisconsinking323 Zeta Project ain't that great to be honest.
The Superman TAS is the greatest version of the character.
I personally believed that the over-abundance of robots in the 90's (and 80's) was the fact that the hero could get away with a higher degree of "animated violence" as opposed to attacking a person.. They still found ways around it (like the "flashing punch" in the Batman Animated Series)
The TMNT cartoon touched on that early on, having Leo slice through a Foot Solider robot. Once they realize it's not killing anyone, they go all out.
Spider-Man TAS has no closed fist violence on another human being, Spidey included. He can throw them, web swing into them, and web them up. But no punches.
@@mrrodriguezHLP Yea. I think the action aged well despite the punch embargo. I just rewatched all of it a year ago or so. It helps that 5 songs(joking) it had really fit each scenario haha.
Remember the Golden Rule of animated television for children; it's not murder if it's robots or obvious non-sentient monsters!
Yep, its easy to tear a robot to pieces without any moral consequences.
While I generally liked Batman the Animated Series and Justice League better, this is still a solid show. I love their handling of Clark (he’s awkward but confident and very good at his job) and ESPECIALLY the castings (Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown in particular will always be Darkseid and Luthor to me). Overall a really great show!
Castings fantastic. But I wish the show had had more Clark stuff.
@@DSan-kl2yc one of my favorite episodes was The Late Mr. Kent. I think it perfectly shows that despite all his power, Superman doesn’t just become Clark to hide, he does it because he loves being Clark
Yes! Ironside's Darkseid spoke normally, yet each word carried an innate menace. So, in the rare instances where he showed anger, HOLY CRAP, he was terrifying. Brown was smooth, knowlegeable, and confident (as someone as successful as Lex would be). With Lex, you often didn't know you were in danger until it was way too late.
Darkseids voice in Batman brave and bold, was a lot scarier and menacy though.
My Darkseid will forever be Frank Welker. Something that powerful and eternal would have a voice that scrapes the air it is spoken into.
It all came together so well! So happy to have been a part of it :)
Thanks so much, Sasha!
I dig channel crossovers, just like this one that happened right here.
I really do think Sasha could succeed doing more voice over work. She reads clear, gets a good emotional range, has a number of distinct voices and characters, and has great comic timing. I could see her doing a cartoon show or an audio book.
so glad to see you in other comic channels Sasha, getting the recognition and widespread appeal you deserve
I was such an unexpected treat to hear you pop up in a Watchtower video.
I only just noticed that Lois has violet eyes and almost always wears purple.
Supermans’ most prominent colors are red and blue. Mix them and you get purple.
I think the designers made this color choice to communicate that while Superman wants to have a relationship with Lois, while he wants to be human, while he wants to blend in, Superman is stuck in the red and blue, kryptonian and human, Kalel and Clark Kent identity crisis. But, as Lois is always there for him, his hope of becoming part of humanity is always nearby, even if just out of reach.
Huh. I did wonder why Lois’s eyes had that color. Intriguing.
Good eye! I would have never caught that. Purple eyes are so beautiful.
I knew red and blue make purple, but I never really put that much thought into it.
It's kinda like Master Mace Windu having a purple blade in Star Wars.
The real reason is Sam L. Jackson wanted to notice himself easily on screen during a far out shot in Attack of the Clones (or so I've heard).
But looking at it from the colors' meanings perspective, the character is better with combat than Force using (blue blades) and taps into the dark side (red blade) while staying in the light (thus getting purple).
This was such a well crafted video! I am so honored to have contributed this. Fantastic work, and much love to everyone involved!
Thanks again for being a part of it! 🥰
it's so good that you're getting to be apart of this. it's pretty epic
I screamed when I heard your voice. You and Scott and Vee.
This version of Superman was always the peek for me. Powerful but not overpowered. A simple farm boy trying to do good.
I always thought he was *too* weak. I mean (almost) no one was hoping for the ridiculousness of the SIlver Age version (sneezing away a solar system, pulling planets with a chain, time travel etc) but in STAS he was even weaker than the current version in the comics. I wish he had been more on the level of other Tim Daly-voiced animated Superman projects that came later, like Public Enemies or JL Doom.
@@sabishiihito yeah I didn't like how he struggled to lift helicopters and got knocked back by bullets. I did like though that villains like metallo and parasite actually gave him a hard time instead of just "actually superman is so strong that if he was serious he could defeat them in 1 second". Superman should be super powerful,but not a method for writers to show off how strong he is. He should struggle with villains hence why he even has a Rouge's gallery lol
*peak
@@sabishiihito same, it annoyed me. There was this one time where he took on a torpedo head on and it hurt him. When he has super speed and all that stuff. This superman version has been the version people see in the mainstream hence why they find it hard to believe that he'll beat goku, or any overpowered beings from other stories.
@@itpugil Stas ain't mainstream bud
The schuster fleischter style was so iconic, my grandfather (God bless soul), watched Batman TAS and Superman TAS and acted like a kid before he passed. He was so glad the style was adopted and as a comic and animation fan, he felt like he went back to his childhood.
While everyone else is all like “Batman this, Batman that…” I always was the biggest Superman fan. And I love references from the Iron Giant. 😭
Same man
Batman just has more personalty than Superman. He has to use his brain, since he's not invulnerable like Superman.
@@krane15 “more personality than Superman”. Now that’s a damn lie. Also Superman has a brain too.
@@Pink7omy Sups charges in blindly without any plan or though of the danger or consequences (Superman Returns). Batman being human, has to rely on stealth, cunning, and careful planning, with everything he does, before taking action.
Remember when Superman said (B/S Public Enemies) he's not used to all this sneaking around? Batman faces characters equal to, and often stronger than he is. Therefore, he has to get to know his enemy and their vulnerabilities before taking action. Otherwise, he wouldn't survive for very long. Even Brainic (Brainac Attacks) called Superman was "nothing but fists."
@@krane15 none of this proves your point. Superman does have a personality!
Just because his is opposite from Batman, it doesn’t mean he has “less personality “. Also read the comics that are cannon…Superman‘s brain is a super computer. That means he is more intelligent than Batman on many levels. Batman is Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne may be smarter than most people,,,however his brain isn’t close to being Albert Einstein. And many times Batman gets help from Gordon, Robins, and of course the man - Alfred Pennyworth- his butler. Superman however usually does everything by himself as he has no sidekick or butler. Superman is more independent if you really think about it.
Superman has many times outsmarted many villains and other superheroes.
Batman is only human like you and me. I like Batman a lot also, and he is very smart and athletic…but I’m being realistic here.
Plus just because Superman is alien, that doesn’t make him “less” relatable. In fact he is more relatable than Batman. He’s not a billionaire, he works a normal job, he has family, etc. Superman is a good guy with a good heart.
This is peak Superman for me. It’s the reason I love the character so much. It’s so classic and the show has aged like fine wine and even stood out from its predecessors because a lot of audiences haven’t watched most of it.
"You should give Superman the respect that he deserves and give him his own show". And infinite respect to her for that call.
There’s always going to be a part of me that’s perpetually angry that STAS didn’t get to have a season redeeming Superman and instead basically ended with Darkseid’s ideological victory over Superman.
He got to explore that more in JL/JLU, but it really needed to be in the formal show.
The most based king Eddie's here too.
Agreed. Still hoping somehow Bruce Timm and Co could think up one more season focused on Superman gaining back the people's trust cause i read that would've been the idea if another season was greenlit back then.
And would serve as a great bridge imo between Superman:TAS and Justice League Season One.
Here's hoping this revival of BTAS has sume nuggets of this to act as glue between STAS and JL. Superman's redemption arc in the eyes of the public with really big bad villian -- Solomon Grundy or the Ultra-humanite (perhaps seen switching bodies) would be good choices. I wouldn't go too overboard with this -- it is a Batman show, after all!
@Will N I always envisioned General Zod making his debut in DCAU animation as possibly the main villain for superman of the season that put man of steel to the test of in the public eye. I LOVE how Zod looks the comics I have now and would love it if they made one more season now. I prefer Darkseid, Mongul,Mongol,. Not make appearances since they wouldn't be seen again till Justice League season 1 & 2 in canon. I have books with pictures where they could probly make episodes out of. For example would be Mr. MXYSPITLIK powers are taken by Parasite who then turns Lois into Darkseid/Lois and Jimmy Olson/Brainiac hybrids. Another would be Livewire saves Superman's life by jumpstarting his heart after Brainiac almost kills him and she shocks him with like overload shock. I wondered if I should mentioned these ideas to Andrea Romano if she's gonna video chat again.
Gotta say, part of the reason I love these cartoons is that I love Art Deco architecture, just gives such good vibes. I prefer my Batman and superman with art-deco in any format.
I'm glad that we got this video on STAS, I feel between BTAS and the JL era, it tends to be underappreciated, despite how much of the DCAU it defined with its designs, crossovers, and tones. Frankly to answer your question I'm glad this is the version of STAS that we got. Modernizing everything from the 40s by way of 60s by way of 80s aesthetic if BTAS helped make things more consistent and honestly more grounded moving forward, I'm glad we lost the black backgrounds that tended to make things blend into each other.
Though with this video, I'm curious if this is the start of seeing more STAS content on the channel. Cause even though Zeta project is the meme, its the show I've wanted to see you guys talk about the most.
This version of Superman has inspired the way I draw my own superheroes. I loved the Shuster and the Fleischer styles but neither of them have made a huge impact on me as the current version did. This style of Superman will always have a place in my heart.
Michael Ironside's performance as Darkseid is the most amazing thing in this show. It's almost on par with Hamill's performance as Joker. Just wish we had seen more of him.
I'm glad he returned to the role for Lego DC Supervillains.
It's characters in the DCAU like Darkseid and Gorilla Grodd that really make me miss them not being gruff and grimly voiced like hard nails when it came to their voices.
Dan Riba just seems to be the coolest dude. I feel like there could be a never ending interview with him that would still be watchable
I can’t get him to stop talking whenever we talk, and I’m okay with it! I’d love to just chat with him about this stuff for hours and hours.
Dan the Man!
@@maxalaintwo3578 yes?
@@dantheman3546 YOOOOOOOO
@@maxalaintwo3578 💪🏾🔥
There's an undeniable charm to the Fleischer-inspired designs for the characters, and I certainly would have loved to see them in motion (they surely could have used the multiverse to do it in an episode), but on the whole I'm glad WB put their foot down and practically forced the creators to give the show its own identity rather than pursue any of the other avenues Timm and co. were thinking of.
It's a clear example of how limitations breed creativity. Had they had their own way and do the Fleischer thing the show might have never been appreciated as its own thing (kind of like Superman Returns isn't as beloved due to its refusal to move away from the shadow of Christopher Reeve's films), and if they had rushed to do Justice League before developing the character of Superman better the results wouldn't have been nearly as memorable as the actual JL series was.
It's important to remember this. People always get mad when a studio forces an artist to follow their instructions rather than giving them freedom but sometimes artists can and will go off the rails if they're not pushed in the right direction. Artists are people after all, and they can make mistakes.
lol image a episode of STAS where clark travels to an alternate world in the original fleischer style designs for STAS, and its just him fumbling his way through a classic fleischer style story.
Honestly the biggest problem with returns was how it saved all the interesting things for the sequel. Kevin spacey just imitates gene hackman's silly lex and the finally is somehow boring and nonsensical, since how is clark able to lift a kryponite continent while being stabbed with kryptonite and having kryponite exposed in front of him, especially since lex's goons could beat him with a small amount of exposed kryponite? Why not just have the continent be made out of regular kryptonian crystals and have clark only be stabbed with kryptonite so it makes a bit more sense?
Compare that to the sequel which would've included brainiac, a fun villain who has somehow never appeared in a movie yet, and bizarro, and character that 3 and 4 had the perfect opportunity to adapt yet never did.
Man a 90s Superman equivalent of Brave and the Bold is something I never knew I wanted until now.
I remember watching the show in the living room with my dad when I was five. The series made me love Superman! What made these shows so great is that they didn’t talk to kids, they were written to be mature enough for adults to enjoy them too and their was actually character development. On top of that, they perfectly captured the essence of each superhero in the DC Universe and respected their lore. Warner Bros should have learned from them.
I'll be honest, this video is an eye opened for me. I was convinced the birth of the superman animated series was completely painless and smooth, simply an "alright we're done with batman, now let's continue with superman." To younger me, the two series looked so incredibly similar in ever possible way, I just assumed they had the exact same team behind both series
They do share a lot of the same team! But yeah, but much more of a struggle than even we knew before diving into making this video!
One thing that gets lost in discussions of STAS is the absolutely AMAZING voice cast for this show. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown are THE definitive versions of the characters for me and millions of others.
Agreed. With Andrea Ramano as voice director, she took a different approach to the DCAU by getting character actors or actors that weren't like usual voice actors (the Jim Cummings', Frank Welker's, E.G. Daily's and Billy West's of the world, who are really great actors in their own right and capable of drama when not making us laugh). Actors like Ron Perlman, singer Paul Williams, Dana Dalaney, Clancy Brown as you said, Tim Daily, Kevin Conroy, etc. gave the voice acting a more prime time tv drama/comedy feel than what one expected from animation at the time, especially for young preteen audiences. The fact they were all in the same room like a radio show so they could bounce off each other also really helped. Good stuff!
The voices for these from this and JLA are the permanent voices of them in my head. BTW Clancy Brown's Lex is the best personification of Lex in anything I've seen.
My introduction to Dana Delaney before Desperate Housewives
Superman is a character that's extremely easy to screw up. Most people who write him just go "hits VERY hard" and then call it a day. And then there are amazing stories like "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way" and the adaptation "Superman vs the Elite" that really gets the character. Comparing Injustice to the former is a grave injustice as it's just "Superman but evil by grief!" While the former is "what if Superman was intentionally acting the way he is and what would happen if he chose a different path?" And that's a far more interesting question than the latter, which I personally find to be boring garbage, and makes for a far better story.
Man of Steel
@@paulrasmussen8953 The movie? The movie even less got the essence of Superman as it ended with him making a choice Superman would always choose to never take. He would find another way since if he takes the decision he's no longer Superman.
Watch the JL episodes "An Alternate World" before Superman kills Lex Luthor he sighs as he knows that he'll never ever be Superman after this.
It's even expressed explicitly in Superman vs The Elite after Superman ditches his moral shackles and two people watching the event on television with one of them asking, "Is that Superman?" and the other person replying in silent terror, "not anymore."
@@nielsjensen4185 thats what i mean. I hate mos. Heck how his dad died is so stupid. A tornado!? What Superman 78 got right was having John Kent die from a heart attack. Something that Superman can't fix.
@@nielsjensen4185 the movie was moreso a modern retelling of the hero in a more cynical world. Had they allowed the director to do his 5 movie arc with superman, you all would've had the status quo superman by now. Take mcu Spiderman for example: he wasn't defined by a tragedy like the character was in the comics until this recent movie. He was handed everything and always had a way out of situations that he usually caused whereas in the comics, Spiderman was just a victim of circumstances and always had to fight between doing the right thing. We finally got a more comic book accurate Spiderman by the end of the recent movie with a comic book accurate costume to boot. People should have more patience and allow others to tell a story before scoffing it all off and derailing a universe.
@@nielsjensen4185 you also forgot to mention that he didn't want to snap zods neck but it was that or a family gets burned by eye lasers. He even cries after killing him, but that's not enough for some people or hard-core DC fanboys who want the status qou and never for things to change.
To me, every iteration of this Superman show sounds really fun and cool in very different and unique ways from each-other, and I would've loved to have seen all of them, but I'm totally happy with what we got. As a massive Superman fan with a very specific vision for how I'd like literally every character in his mythos to be handled there's obviously a ton of things that I'd do differently if I was in charge, and I cannot pretend that certain BTS comments from Bruce about how "boring" Clark's villains are don't drive me up a fucking wall to the point where the experience with the show is a bit soured for me, but I'm well-aware that there's literally no-one who could 100% capture my exact vision for the character, and when I keep that in mind I think STAS had a lot more hits than misses.
As an aside though, God DAMN do I love that Brainiac design; I definitely would love to see it repurposed for something else some day.
It’s SUPER close to the little kid Brainiac from the “Gods and Monsters” Superman short, I almost threw that in there but it felt more opinion than fact-I couldn’t find anything to confirm it, and good luck getting a hold of Bruce Timm, haha
I would have liked the Joe Shuster style better.
Same. I can’t help but think that half the reason why STAS suffered early on was because Bruce Timm didn’t have the same type of passion for Superman’s villains as he did with Batman’s villains. That early Braniac design was infinitely more cool than what we got.
Nobody cares about your vision
yeah. I love the fleischer designs and brainiac looked amazing. I really wish they went with that look.
This was really a good coverage. It's understandable how difficult it was for them coming off from Batman: The Animated Series. I can't help but notice that because they did Batman before, it felt automatic for them to follow that path but ultimately saw the distinction: dark vs bright. And good for them to realize that. Superman: The Animated Series was really a good show and a good complement to BTAS.
I read years ago that the Joe Oriolo “The Mighty Hercules” from the early 60s design was inspired by Superman’s look. So in my mind it all came full circle in STAS. Plus “The Mighty Hercules” was one of the earliest cartoons I remember as a kid in the 60s. I have a fondness for that show.
STAS is an underrated gem that I love. Glad it's finally gotten some recognition. Well-done and researched video.
Honestly just speechless. This is just so... Enlightening and inspiring.
STAS is phenomenal, so I wouldn’t trade that for anything. That being said, it would be fun to see a Brave and the Bold-style Superman cartoon! Maybe exploring a different era of characters than the silver age stuff that BtBatB, but a sort of spiritual successor with Superman in the lead could be fun (and show off Clark’s personality quite a bit)
The Brave and the Bold were kiddy versions which I never liked. Even as a kid they seem infantile to me. I had friends that would laugh at them and I just stared at them wonder what was going on in their heads. They were always so predicable.
@@krane15 Don't worry, you'll appreciate what the Brave and the Bold did a lot more when you're older. There's something special about the golden age style of that show that i probably would've disliked as a child too, but when things get dreary shows like that are what you need
@@Lillowh *Silver
Can agree on a first glance that B: TBatB feels a bit too childish, but darn, as you progress to the show, you'll be surprised at how much depth and passion project-feeling it has.
And then there's the deaths scenes. By gar, how is this show still deemed "childish" when it actually has some memorable and even tear-jerking deaths?!
I love their decision to make Darksied a main villain for the series, all those episodes that included those characters were always bangers
As a kid and adult, the art style looked IDENTICAL. The backgrounds were the defining difference
Nice, extremely thorough work as always, James and co., with this "Herculean" effort of a RUclips video! You think you've heard it all about the DCAU until WDB throws out a term like "Ocean Liner Deco." Wow, color me impressed! Definitely just one of many great tidbits in this entry, and can I just stress how much of an all-around good guy Dan Riba seems? Such a fun dynamic having him as a "phone-a-friend" when making a video like this! Stay schway, guys!
Personally, I always liked The Superman show over the Batman one. I admit BTAS is great, but STAS hit me in all the right spots. And, the Darkseid stuff is some of the greatest work the DCUA ever did. That Finale.......*chef's kiss*
I can't imagine a studio today going "You know what? Let's not rush into a big crossover-you've gotta take time to establish character."
It's the exact opposite of what happened with the Snyderverse, and it's just mindblowing to hear that Warner pumped the breaks back in the day!
As a comic nerd going on 30. Rewatching and completing these DCAU series has been just a awe inspiring experience. The adult themes in a kid friendly format. You really appreciate the creativity and ingenuity of Bruce, Dan and rest of the crew. They really valued these characters. I hope James Gunn and his partner can put the love and care into these wonderful characters.
Some tremendous work and editing here. This is one of your best videos ever.
Thank you, Liam!
My favorite thing about STAS is the dynamic relationship it sets up between Superman and Darkseid for JL. Superman having pure hatred towards Darkseid was awesome and seeing Darkseid actively trying to piss off Superman made him such a great villain.
This popped into my recommendations and I'm just blown away. Not only was this an amazingly comprehensive look into the show's production, but the production on this video is fantastic. I really appreciate that you cite all your sources in the quotes, but also that you got different people to voice the sources. I can't think of many content creators that do that.
I had no idea how troubled this show's production was behind the scenes. I'd never heard of the previous failed plans like setting it in the 40s or that Brainiac design. This was seriously fantastic and you earned yourself a new subscriber. Thank you.
I really like what the cartoon ended up being. It really encapsulates everything I love about these characters, while employing that amazing animated series style.
Fantastic job with the video!
This retrospective made me really appreciate and admire STAS a lot more. From what could've been to how the series look was finalized, I've never been more happy and grateful for this take on the Man of Steel and the history behind it.
This was a beautiful video, I might be a Batman fan but I did grew up watching Superman: The Animated Series. As a grown-up who started to develop a love and appreciation towards the Man of Tomorrow thanks to Man of Steel, this made me smile a lot.
You've just earned a subscriber, I've been enjoying the videos especially the many stuff involving Batman.
Thanks, Tony! Welcome!
i absolutely love this video essay/documentary mash up project, it’s really well put together and STAS is my favorite TV show. This was awesome
Thank you!
I think the Lemillion arch of my Hero covers how I always wanted to see superman. Giving up everything to save one person. Being vulnerable and giving his all after the fact. Its really touching and inspiring.
Something I havent felt for superman in a LONG time
Wow, this is an incredible video on a subject I never considered before! Stylish editing, solid writing, strong voice-overs. . .Excellent job, everyone!
I used to be a kid who when someone says "Superman!" I'll immediately remember the DCAU look of Superman.
7:19 "NO NOT THE KRYPTONITE. NOT THE KRYPTONITE. AHHHHH. OH IT'S IN MY EYES. MY EYES. AHHHHHHHH. AHHHHHHHHHHHH."
I'd like to see other aesthetics if it was in some kind of Infinite Crisis movie. Just as Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill have become THE version of Batman and Joker for most of us, Bruce Timm's DCAU design has become THE version for me. Other styles are good, but my brain always comes back his design.
Thanks for the excellent video. I've learned much.
I’ll always remember the Mr.Mxyzptlyk episodes those were really fun and creative, the fun unique upbeat animation styles, and the voice casting. Superman, Lex, Darkseid. There’s more but this is the first thing that pops into my mind. Superman’s character in it was amazing too
I just finished STAS for the first time. It is a gem of a show. I recommend it to all superman fans. It really is the definitive superman for me.
One thing I really liked about this show was that it actually made Clarke/Superman funny. Its just as much fun watching Clarke trade barbs with Lois as it was watching Superman punch stuff.
STAS is my BTAS. I was too young to understand how good BTAS was, but my uncle really pushed me to get into super heroes. When STAS came out we had something to talk about and share together, he was more of a Batman/Spider-man fan, and I loved Superman. It's something that I will never forget in my childhood, and Tim Daily will always be my Superman :)
I might prefer the 40's-like, more batman the animated series related design, but I am happy with what we got. This style has influenced how I draw for as long as I remember.
I'm 35 years old. I became really really interested in Marvel and DC in 2010. Everything from video games, movies, shows, & ESPECIALLY DC Animated Movies & shows!
As someone who suffers from depression, anxiety, & at times social anxiety, the world of superheroes really really helps me out with a lot of that!
There's so many good stories that are just about how hard or how good life can be, AND with acceptance and guilt. Striving to be a better person and knowing that life is hard I really look up to the superhero lifestyle.
And when I'm feeling down or sad or depressed I can read a comic or watch a movie or a show, and they make me feel a lot better.
AND I DEFINITELY THANK YOU WATCHTOWER DATABASE! I don't really have any friends that I can talk about this stuff with in person. So being able to listen to someone talk about everything that I would want to talk about in person is really really helpful and heartwarming to my life! The DC Animated Universe, with there shows & movies is one of my favorite things that has to do with superheroes :)
I came for Casually Comics; was pleasantly surprised to hear from Nerdsync; and stayed for this absolute gem of content you've created. Awesome work.
I like the idea of the 40's design. Imagine putting a modern twist on retro sci-fi and you'd be close to the Superman I'd like to do.
I can sympathize with their struggle to "get it right." I have always found Superman and Spider-Man to be the hardest comic characters to draw. Spider-Man's costume is about the details, the webbing, the poses. But Superman is SO iconic, that the despite the simplicity of design, it's very difficult to "get it right." There's almost always something that just doesn't fit, just a wee bit off...
2:51 Oh! I remember this one! My dad actually bought the VHS of the show for me as a kid!
This is fantastic! Superman TAS is the one I grew up with and my definitive version of the character. I learned so much about the production of this show that I had no idea about. You guys outdid yourselves. Excellent work!
Thanks, Diego!
More please…. I worked at everyone of the impacted studios from the 1990’s to late 2019. I saw so much production up close. I talked to so many of the folks who worked in these shows. I did IT. I stumbles across this and had to watch it none stop. You did not disappoint. Awesome! My hats off and I will contribute.. this was so cool!! Well done!
Nice! Send us an email at info@watchtowerdatabase. com - let’s chat!
Well done. I had no idea about most of the history of this show, though it was such a big influence on me at the time. This along with BTAS were required watching for me. I put off actual life events to keep up with episodes.
Thanks for the great work!
I had the shows on DVD and the special features like commentaries and interviews with Timm, Dini, Reba, Alan Burnett, Dan Didio, and a few of the voice actors gave some good insight to what was going on behind the scenes. Very fascinating to listen to. This Superman cartoon is a great show to look at, has a lot to like about it. As you can tell, I'm a fan.
Just finished the World's Finest arc and The Late Mr. Kent. Absolutely loving this series
Wow just...wow.😲 This is so well presented. I have no words.
Saying excellent work seems so insufficient. Truly outstanding work.👏👏👏👏👏
Thank you so much!
I just wanna say, that video was just great. I see it now a year later, but you really feel the work you put into this in every minute of it.
Thank you! Very proud of this one.
This was so fantastic. One of my favorite videos you guys have done!
I can’t imagine the DCAU looking any other way. I’m not sure I’ll ever like an animation style more than the post-BTAS animation style. Its a very timeless look!
What a great behind the scenes video. Superman The Animated series is my favourite of the DCAU shows.
That's fascinating. It's such a unique and iconic style, but it's so easy to see all the influences when you put them up there.
I love it!!!! Thank u dude!!!
Love these longer, documentary-type videos. Your content is always pretty top-tier, especially when considering this is all for an incredibly niche topic, so to see some potentially wider-reaching content filling that niche is always a treat. I feel like videos like these have the potential to randomly explode in popularity due to the documentary-type approach to covering topics a lot of people might vaguely remember from their childhoods.
10/10, good shit
The amount of praise batman and justice league get is great and deserved. But, Superman TAS is damn near perfect and so consistently good. I think it deserves so much more recognition as it easily stands as my favorite of the DCAU, and if superman were a more popular character in modern times I think the show would be held in much higher regard
I grew up watching BTAS, but I only just recently watched through the rest of the DCAU. AND OMG IT'S ALL SO GOOD! I can't believe I waited so long to watch it.
Gonna do a full watch of it myself on HBO Max. I missed out on Batman Beyond, only seeing one or two episodes. Time to go through the four horsemen of DC cartoons (Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond and Justice League, inlcuding unlimited). Shows like this laid the groundwork for similar dramatic cartoons like Disney's Gargoyles, and it's influence mixed with anime worked for shows like Exoquad and Nickelodeon's Avatar shows.
This show is special to me because it not only served as an introduction to Superman and Superheroes for me when I was a kid in Nigeria, but it also introduced me to the glorious world of Jack "The King" Kirby!
I remember that MIGHTY HERCULES show from when I was a little kid. One of the reasons I liked it so much was because Herc looked like Superman! He even had a similar color scheme. And Newton, Herc's centaur sidekick, used to remind me a little of Jimmy Olsen.
Great job guys, I love STAS, and I’m glad you’re talking about it! I would have liked to see the Fleischer look.
The craziest thing that they did for the show was making a sensible, consistent backstory for Brainiac
I love this channel so much! So good to learn so much about this iconic animated series.
Truly excellent work, well done, everyone!
Holy crap, I’m less than 2 minutes in and I’m blown away by the animation and editing this video uses to bring various iterations of the character to life and transition between them.
i remember as a kid i didn't like Superman (that changed inmensely later), but when i saw this animated show... man, i tough it looked damn cool, and i watched it a LOT, and it was on great part because of the artstyle, so hell yeah, they did an insanely good job! thanks for that to everyone involved.
STAS's aesthetic is so good, a fusion of the futurism of two wildly different eras. The grandiose art deco architecture and roads in the sky conceived by 1940s artists, and the angular and seemingly achievable technologies pitched by 1990s concept artists. The show is really the best of both times.
And we cannot discuss this show's art without making note of the fantastic efforts undertaken by the partner animation studios in Japan and Korea. Even _Ghibli_ got in on it, animating extensive sections of The World's Finest as part of an agreement with TMS. STAS truly is one of the best-animated shows of all time, though not without its hiccups. There's a number of sequences where you can just _tell_ the artists put on their own flair.
not even done watching, but dang! for the first video of yours that ive seen, this is a banger!
Thanks, Alex!
I think there were two main things that helped this version of Superman stand out:
1. The writing and character dynamics were simply fantastic.
2. They properly limited how powerful he was. While some villains like Toyman and Livewire still didn't stand a chance against him in a direct fight, it was still entertaining to see them try or use other methods. Meanwhile, the powerful space alien villains gave him a lot of trouble, especially Darkseid.
Great video! Amazing to see more of that early concept art. That Brainiac look is so striking. I would have loved to have seen at least an animation test in that style.
STAS is fantastic. I'm brazilian and I grew up watching this show on broadcast TV in the early 2000's. So, this was my first Superman. It defined my perception of the character and his world more than anything else. I have all these memories from watching it as a kid, from a great origin story in "Last Son of Krypton", to how cool Brainiac looked as a villain and how interesting it was that he was tied to Krypton's destruction, to the cool threats Superman would face like Maxima, Livewire, Parasite, or Lois' pet monkey from her childhood, to the absolutely shocking and devastating events of "Apokolips Now" and "Legacy".
I fell in love with it again rewatching it a few years ago. Everything, from design, to writing, to characterization and voice acting pulled me in again. The love is not just nostalgia: It's a really solid show that holds up. DCAU Superman is my favorite version of the character, and my favorite character in the entire DCAU. I love his arc throughout the shows, from starting off as this idealistic character, to facing adversities he can't simply defeat by punching, losing his pedestal status and trying to regain it throughout the next few shows, to facing his darker side and emerging victorious and stronger for it.
Speaking of arcs, this is the most pivotal show of the DCAU. Not only it was this show that started expanding the universe, but it also started a lot of the story arcs that would be fundamental in JL/JLU, such as everything Darkseid related, Brainiac's continuing search for knowledge and twisted partnership with Lex Luthor, a growing mistrust of superhumans that would be the motivation to the founding of CADMUS, these being the main examples.
And to answer your final question: while it's interesting to look at preliminary designs and concepts and wonder what could have been, I'm so glad that it pulled from various sources of influence but wasn't a copycat of any of them. That it did its own version of the character and the world he inhabits, that it did its own thing instead of chasing the glory of past successes like the Fleischer show. That one already exists, show me something new. And boy, they showed me. This show is what made me fall in love with the character and the team involved with creating it deserves all the praise in the world.
Also, I wish STAS' Metropolis was a real place that I could visit because it looks fantastic with its sci-fi otherwordlyness.
Great video, guys, and keep up the good work.
Happy holidays!
Batman TAS may have started the DCAU but Superman is what gave the DCAU its unique look and feel.
Nice work!
For a minute Lois’ purple eyes made its way into the mainstream comics!
There is a thread on Instagram talking about what a good Superman Video Game would look like.
As a kid, my introduction to Superman were the 1940s Fleischer shorts. They had a realistic aspect to them that I hadn't experienced with any other animated show. Re-watched them some years ago and boy, do they hold up!
Gilbert Gottfried as Mr. Myxzptlyk was poetic perfection. More iconic than Hamil's Joker, IMHO.
I love the art style for this show. It is very close to BtAS, but still it's own thing.
This was incredible! This was really well done! Thank you for this. I didn't even realize it was 38 minutes long!
Dude, I have never seen the Fleicher Superman before and I’m shook by it. How is it posible for a 1940s to look so crisp and clean???
Love and talent
Still thank you soo much for this documentery!
One year passed by and its still so true, the animated series nailed it.
With its love, soul character, witch even an big boudget Hollywood version decades later cannot reach.
And they still dont get it.
I hope for over two decades now that Warner would focus on the heart and soul of the story board like these guyes did it at this 90s golden glory version of my teenage days. And still now, staying a growen hairless old boy, im never get tired to watch this series!
It helps me to keep soul in days like these!
And still insprires!
I really hope and its ovious im not the only one, Warner Bros /DC(-Studios), would remember to understand the story, they ones understood so well to tell and would bring us a live action movie version with a focus way more back in that direction and away from that tragical super rough man who forces justice and more lost hope as if he is a symbol of it. It isnt about to be realistic in the first place. I wish theire would be more dreamers with influence in that, but the way things are looking nower days, its all about cash.
And they wonder why their new soul less big screen babies wont fly! Whyyy??
Even you have the best matched perfect actor.
Thank you for that documentery and i wish someone would send it to guyes J. G. Ore people you make the big screen movies.
And really "hope" that they would care.
Cos a Movie with form and character like this kids cartoon series from the 90s would really be a symbol of hope, especially today.🤞💫💫💫
Great Video James, Scott, Shasa, Ra'Ron, Xavier, Vee, and Dan.
Until I watched this I had no idea that I was born on the same day the first episode of this show came out. And I never would have known if I hadn't binged your channel. So thank you for that! I really am enjoying this channel and learning how my childhood favorites came together like this.
That’s awesome! You should check out our podcast “Jump on the Bat-Wagon” where I’m taking my friend Brian through the entire DCAU for the first time-we start STAS on Friday!
I love learning about the behind the scenes, great job to all involved.
I love the SUPERMAN we got. It was superb. Some of my favorite memories with my mother revolve around STAS and BTAS(She was a HUGE comic nerd!)
I like that you actually shouted out the quote readers in this video, and even included their icons. I think this is the first time I've seen a video where anyone's done this. Please, keep it up.
And I'm very happy with the Superman show that we got. It was a very entertaining experience with a bunch of compelling, likable characters, and it's sadly far too easy to forget that that actually exists in the DC outside of the comics since Zack Snyder seems to be what people think of as Superman. Superman is not Ayn Rand.
Credit where credit is due, for the other RUclipsrs!
This was great! Awesome video!
It was a really well-done show. My only gripe (and this was a gripe back when I watched it as a teenager) is they *really* depowered Superman for this show. There were scenes where he'd struggle to stop a car or lift a small airplane.
To me that's the biggest challenge with these superheros, and especially Superman, since he's the most powerful. If he's too powerful there's no struggle, and without conflict, there's no story.
That's the reason he holds back and takes a lot more abuse than he has to. If he used all his strength and abilities he'd end up killing a lot of villains, and we know what would happen once that gets started.
I always thought that this was a younger Superman who wasn't at peak strength or at full mastery of his abilities. Also, Justice League openly stated that Superman has to constantly pull his punches so he doesn't kill people. Then we got unleashed Superman when he and Darkseid duked it out b/c he knew that Darkseid could handle it. Man this series was GOLD.
I am really happy with what we got. This is and always will be my Superman. These shows were so good and I love what they eventually grew into with the whole DCAU.