Classic cartoons from the '70s and '80s: Batman, Superman, and friends

[christopherl bennett]

Thanks to the wonders of DVD sets, I've been revisiting some of the cartoons
of my youth, particularly superhero-themed ones. The first was Filmation's
The New Adventures of Batman from 1977. This was Filmation's second Batman
series; the first ran contemporaneously with the Adam West/Burt Ward sitcom
of the late '60s and was the animation debut of Olan Soule and Casey Kasem as
the Dynamic Duo. By the '70s, Soule and Kasem were playing Batman and Robin
on Superfriends from Filmation's chief rival studio, Hanna-Barbera. But in
'77, Filmation brought back West and Ward to reprise their roles in a series
that owed at least as much to the live-action sitcom as to Filmation's
earlier effort. Melendy Britt (the future star of She-Ra) played Batgirl,
Catwoman, and every other female role, and Lennie Weinrib played Commissioner
Gordon and every male villain except Clayface, while Filmation's co-
founder/producer Lou Scheimer did uncredited voice work as Bat-Mite (in the
character's TV debut), as well as the Batcomputer, Clayface, and various
minor roles.

As for the character designs, while Dick Grayson/Robin seemed to be modeled
somewhat on Ward, Bruce Wayne and Batman had a very Neal Adams-y design.
Bat-Mite probably had the most changed appearance, given greenish skin and a
purple and pink costume with a scrawled "M" on his chest. This version of
Bat-Mite was from an alien planet/dimension called Ergo, and had more limited
magical powers than his comics counterpart, but he's still an
overenthusiastic Bat-fan who tends to cause trouble with his well-intentioned
bumbling. The series focuses rather heavily on Bat-Mite, which gets kind of
annoying. Occasionally, though, he manages to be actually funny. Very
occasionally.

While the tone of the show is not quite as campy and satirical as the '60s
live-action sitcom, it's set in a similar world and influenced by it in a lot
of ways, for instance including Batpoles and a Batphone (although for some
reason the Batphone in the Batcave is an antique phone hidden in the lid of a
barrel) and Robin saying "Holy (something)" every thirty seconds (along with
other interjections like "Leaping lumbago!"). But there's no Alfred or Aunt
Harriet, and Barbara is the assistant DA in this version, although that never
serves any story purpose beyond giving her an excuse to be standing around in
the Commissioner's office. Batman and Robin are aware of Batgirl's secret
identity in this show, though one episode suggested the reverse was not true.
Yet secret identities were handled carelessly; in one episode, Robin went
undercover as Dick Grayson, and Batman blithely addressed him as "Dick" while
the Commissioner was listening. Meanwhile, the Batcomputer undergoes a
bizarre evolution. Initially it's much like the sitcom version, spitting out
cryptic messages on paper printouts, but then it acquires a voice (Scheimer's
voice slowed down to make it deeper) and pretty soon ends up as an
inexplicably sentient AI with a jovial personality.

Adam West's return to the role of Batman after eight years works pretty well.
He doesn't play it as broadly as he did in the original, except in occasional
moments, but it feels like it's largely the same characterization, and West's
performance is more expressive and convincing than a lot of '70s cartoon
voiceover work. In a couple of early episodes, West even brings back his
practice of giving Bruce Wayne a more laid-back, soft-spoken delivery than
the more intense Batman, though it's inconsistent. Ward, meanwhile, is simply
terrible. He delivers almost every line in the same labored tone. It's like
he's trying to recapture the intensity of his original performance, but isn't
able to muster up the same energy or even talk as fast because he's reading
from a script. Between that and the way his voice changed in the intervening
years, it occurred to me that it might've worked better if they'd sped up the
tape a bit. The other performers are simply workmanlike, though Weinrib's
pretty good at doing a wide range of voices, and Britt's Catwoman has a bit
of a Julie Newmar quality that's nice to hear. (By the way, I'm pretty
certain that a number of uncredited voices from the animated Star Trek were
Lou Scheimer's son Lane, though I'm not sure yet. They certainly weren't
Doohan, though.)

Like all Filmation shows of this era, the music is credited to Yvette Blais
and Jeff Michael, pseudonyms for Ray Ellis (the composer for the classic '60s
Spider-Man cartoon) and Filmation producer Norm Prescott, and includes a mix
of library cues created for the show and ones recycled from earlier shows.
This series somewhat straddles the line between Filmation's adventure shows
and comedy shows, and the original cues are much in the same style as Ellis &
Prescott's comedy scores, but the stock cues are drawn heavily from adventure
shows like Lassie's Rescue Rangers, Star Trek, and Shazam.

Like most Filmation shows, TNAoB had a brief tag at the end with the heroes
talking to the audience - actually called "Bat-Message" segments in this
case. This was usually done to convey the moral of the story to the viewers,
but TNAoB's tags only conveyed morals in the first few episodes; for most of
the series, they were just rather pointless jokes involving Bat-Mite.

-

I was pleased to discover that Hanna-Barbera's The Super Powers Team:
Galactic Guardians was also out on DVD. This was the final incarnation of the
Superfriends franchise based on DC's Justice League, and a departure from
previous seasons in that it was actually intelligent, well-written, and
fairly authentic to the comics. A lot of the credit for that goes to story
editor Alan Burnett, who would later go on to produce Batman: The Animated
Series and most of the subsequent DC Animated Universe shows and post-DCAU
Batman shows/movies from Warner Bros. Animation. Rich Fogel was also a writer
on Galactic Guardians who would later be a major contributor to the DCAU.

The Super Powers Team title (also used in-story in place of "Justice League"
or "Superfriends" as a team label) was a tie-in to an action figure line
being released at the time. The show also changed the character designs,
replacing the Alex Toth models used in previous Superfriends seasons with new
designs by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, then a major comic-book artist who also
did model sheets (i.e. official character designs) for all DC's comics at the
time. Much of the cast was a holdover from previous seasons, notably Danny
Dark as Superman, Casey Kasem as Robin, Frank Welker as Darkseid and Kalibak,
and Rene Auberjonois as Desaad (a role he would later reprise in Justice
League Unlimited). But Adam West replaced Olan Soule as Batman, making this
the final time West reprised the role as a series regular, and the first time
he played opposite Kasem's Robin instead of Ward's. Actually this is
apparently the second season with West and Burnett involved, but the first
isn't available on DVD, at least not at Netflix. And the previous season was
transitional, introducing Darkseid as the main villain and adding Firestorm
(Mark L. Taylor) to the cast, but keeping the infamous Wonder Twins, who are
mercifully absent from the Galactic Guardians season. Instead, in this season
the team is joined by Cyborg (Ernie Hudson, fresh off Ghostbusters and doing
a much poorer acting job than I would've expected from him). As the youngest
members of the team, Firestorm and Cyborg are heavily emphasized.

Most of the eight episodes are okay, better than previous Superfriends
seasons but nothing really impressive. But there are two episodes that make
this season really noteworthy, both of them either written or co-plotted by
Burnett. I'll start with the final episode of the series, "The Death of
Superman," written by John Loy and plotted by Loy and Burnett. Of course
Superman doesn't really die, but it's impressive that the show was even
allowed to tackle the concept of death or use the word, when so many animated
shows then and subsequently (including B:TAS) were forbidden to mention it.
And despite having more modern elements like Darkseid and Firestorm, the
episode feels like a classic Silver Age Superman tale, right down to the
visit to the Fortress of Solitude. It's a lot of fun, and there's some pretty
good character work involving Firestorm's guilt at failing to save Superman.

But the best episode by far is #4, Burnett's "The Fear." It's noteworthy as
the first time that Batman's origin story was ever dramatized outside of the
comics, and one of the only times it's ever been depicted in animation (since
B:TAS was unable to do more than indirectly allude to it due to FOX's strict
censorship on daytime TV). Of course there was still a fair amount of
censorship on ABC at the time, and "The Fear" couldn't actually show the
shootings, but it got around that very artfully by cutting to flashes of
lightning and making it crystal clear from the look on young Bruce's face
what had happened. I remember that I caught this episode on the TV in a hotel
room (or maybe it was a hospital - that was around the time I was being
treated for a retinal melanoma) and was very impressed by its power and
intelligence, compared to what I'd come to expect from the Superfriends
franchise. I've never forgotten it since, and I was thrilled to be able to
see it again. It holds up pretty well, and at times it almost feels like a
B:TAS pilot.

In fact, Burnett's love of Batman comes through clearly. In every Burnett-
written episode, Batman is a major player and is the ultimate detective,
always making the Holmesian deductions and staying a step ahead of the
criminals. This was the first time Adam West was called upon to play a
serious version of Batman (though nowhere near as grim as Kevin Conroy's),
and it's interesting to compare to his previous two turns in the role. I
wouldn't say he knocks it out of the park, but he handles it pretty well,
better than I recall Soule's Batman being. He's still a little broad and
melodramatic at times, but no more so than typical for voice acting at the
time. And he gets in some good moments of emotion in "The Fear" and when he
says farewell to his old friend in "The Death of Superman."

By this point, like most studios (except Filmation), Hanna-Barbera had
outsourced its animation to Japan, so the animation on this season, while
still crude by today's standards, was an improvement on H-B's usual TV work
from the '70s, and on previous seasons of Superfriends. But it's still not
much to write home about. The music is by H-B's regular composer Hoyt Curtin
and is serviceable. I was never as fond of Curtin's cartoon music as I was of
Ellis & Prescott's.

-

The third vintage DC show I've revisited is the 1988 Superman series from
Ruby-Spears, a studio spun off from Hanna-Barbera (Joe Ruby and Ken Spears
were writer/producers for a number of H-B shows). The show ran for one 13-
episode season and is on DVD under the title Ruby-Spears Superman. But its
actual title was just Superman, and it presaged the classic '90s Batman and
Superman animated series (and a few Batman and Superman movies) in having a
main title sequence that never actually showed the series title onscreen,
instead just using the Superman logo as a sort of ideogram for the word.
Although it did have Bill Woodson (the erstwhile Superfriends announcer)
reciting the opening narration from the '50s TV series, so the name
"Superman" was heard repeatedly if never seen. (But due to censorship,
"faster than a speeding bullet" is demonstrated by animation of Superman
being faster than a lightning bolt instead.)

The series was developed and story-edited by Marv Wolfman, the noted DC
Comics writer and editor. Yet the storytelling is pretty basic, without even
as much sophistication as Galactic Guardians had; it's pretty much straight
action through and through, with the main cast rarely rising above one-
dimensional portrayals. This is partly because the main stories are fairly
short, because the last 4-5 minutes of each episode consists of "Superman's
Family Album," a series of vignettes (mostly written by Cherie Wilkerson)
following young Clark Kent through the milestones of his formative years,
from his adoption by Ma and Pa Kent in episode 1 to his debut as Superman in
episode 13. Although they spend the most time on his early childhood and only
the last few segments on his teens.

Being made in 1988, shortly after DC relaunched its continuity in Crisis on
Infinite Earths, it's a hybrid of the pre-Crisis and post-Crisis versions of
the character, along with some elements of the Reeve movies. The main
characters are pretty much their standard pre-Crisis selves, with Clark as a
timid klutz and Lois only having eyes for Superman. But Lex Luthor's
portrayal here is rather unique, a combination of the pre-Crisis evil genius
scientist, the post-Crisis business magnate who stays above the law and never
gets his crimes exposed, and the Gene Hackman-style wisecracker with a sexy
henchwoman (although in this version she's more cute than sexy, a vacuous,
girlish blonde named Jessica Morganberry). But then, as I recall, Marv
Wolfman actually pitched a version of Luthor as a business magnate before
John Byrne did, so perhaps this show's Luthor reflects how Wolfman would've
approached the character if he'd been picked to do the relaunch. The "Family
Album" segments are a more awkward blend of pre- and post-Crisis elements;
like the pre-Crisis version, this show's Clark has superpowers from infancy,
but like the post-Crisis version, he's never Superboy, only adopting the cape
and tights when he first comes to Metropolis. So basically the "Family Album"
segments are about Clark using his powers to get into well-intentioned
mischief (when he's very young) or make it easier to handle mundane problems
(as he gets older), and only occasionally using them to help anybody in any
way (and only in minor ways). It seems a great waste of his potential, and it
seems out of character for Clark to wait until adulthood before beginning to
use his abilities for heroic ends. Although it was an interesting idea, the
"Family Album" segments ended up being pretty anticlimactic and didn't
contribute much to the series.

The voice work was pretty solid, though in the broader, more artificial vein
of cartoon voice work of the era. Superman was played by Beau Weaver, who
would later cross the DC/Marvel divide and play Mister Fantastic in the '90s
Fantastic Four cartoon. He was a fairly good Superman, with a strong, booming
voice, but his Clark was too obviously a deep-voiced man trying to sound
higher-pitched. And he could get way too melodramatic when shouting was
called for. One doesn't expect Superman's "Great Scott!" to sound quite that
panicked. Lois was Ginny McSwain, also the voice director for the show and
for many, many other animated series since (including The Batman in the mid-
2000s). This seems to be the only show where McSwain played a series regular,
but she's a pretty good Lois (again, given the era). Character actor Mark L.
Taylor was Jimmy, and Perry White, interestingly, was played by Stanley Ralph
Ross, best known as one of the chief writers of the Adam West Batman sitcom
and the developer of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series. Michael Bell, one
of the top voice actors of the era (he was Duke on GI Joe, among many
others), was very effective as a Hackmanesque Luthor. Alan Oppenheimer and
Tress MacNeille were the Kents, and notable guests include Howard Morris as
the Prankster, Rene Auberjonois as General Zod, an uncredited but
unmistakeable James Avery as the mayor of Metropolis, and Nancy Cartwright
(the future Bart Simpson) as young Clark's babysitter. Wonder Woman guest
stars in episode 8, with B. J. Ward reprising the role she'd previously taken
on in Galactic Guardians.

Where this series really excels is in its production values. The animation,
produced by Toei and Dai Won Animation, is superb and gorgeous, better than
most of the TV animation of the era. The character designs are by another
noted comic artist, Gil Kane, and it's just a very good-looking show. But my
favorite part is the music by the great Ron Jones, who was also doing Star
Trek: The Next Generation and Disney's DuckTales around the same time.
Jones's score here is like a middle ground between those two, and in some
ways embodies the best of both worlds (pun intended). The main title theme
begins with a reprise of John Williams's Superman theme, but then segues into
a similar-sounding original theme by Jones which is the basis for the
incidental scoring (since they only licensed the Williams theme for the main
title). But it's a great theme, and Jones uses it very well. His action-
adventure music has always been my favorite part of his work, and this series
is right in his sweet spot (except for the "Family Album" segments, which
tended to call for more gentle and saccharine sounds, sometimes handled well
but sometimes bordering on the insipid). A lot of the music is original to
each episode, but there's a lot of tracked music too, which is something I
always liked in old cartoons because it let me memorize a lot of my favorite
cues. A number of Jones's cues from this show have stuck with me for decades,
and it's great to get to hear them again. Much of the series' score has
actually been released on CD, as part of a massive box set from Film Score
Monthly. Scroll down to "Disc 7" at the link and you can actually listen to
about 26 minutes' worth of the score, including most of my personal
favorites.

If only the writing on this show had been on the level of what Galactic
Guardians sometimes managed, this could've been one of the greats. As it is,
it's great to look at and listen to, but it falls short in the story
department. I would've expected that Marv Wolfman's involvement would've let
the show embody more of the conceptual and character richness of the comics,
much as Galactic Guardians managed to do. But for whatever reason, that
wasn't in the cards. So while this show is a major step forward in animation
and music from previous DC shows, it's a step backward in writing, and thus
it fails to be the kind of seminal creation that Batman: The Animated Series
would be just four years later. So it's a transitional work, more the end of
one era than the beginning of the next. (And it goes to show how important
and underappreciated a role Alan Burnett played in bringing about the
revolution that was the DC Animated Universe.)

[Ubiquitous]

Actually, while John Byrne gets all the credit because he wrote and drew MAN OF
STEEL, Marv Wolfman was also involved in the development of the new direction,
since he was going to be writing THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN monthly. The new
version of Lex Luthor was his primary contribution to the new continuity.


--
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.

[anim8rfsk]

Whereas he's the one that deserves more blame than anybody else for screwing
up the post Crisis world with his idiot demands.

> because he wrote and drew MAN
> OF
> STEEL, Marv Wolfman was also involved in the development of the new direction,
> since he was going to be writing THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN monthly. The new
> version of Lex Luthor was his primary contribution to the new continuity.

--

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