Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Cartoons I Grew Up On: Superman The Animated Series

I'm not sure if I've said this before, but I didn't read many comics growing up.  The vast majority of my comic book knowledge comes from the cartoons in the 90's that I watched.  Most of these seem to be accurate enough portrayals of what happened in the comics that I can keep up with my comic geek friends fairly well.  One of those cartoons in a series of excellent cartoons was Superman The Animated Series.

This series was made by the same people who created the absolutely amazing Batman The Animated Series.  Unfortunately, the art style changed to be even less realistic (women with no waist, men with giant shoulders, etc.) than the Batman series first three seasons.  But they still tried to make Superman and his abilities more realistic.  The show also made other characters important and capable besides Superman.  This show is why I have such a respect for Dr. Hamilton from S.T.A.R. Labs.  This show and the aforementioned Batman cartoon built the basis for a world where the Justice League made sense (which is another amazing show, by the way).  This show is also the first time I've seen the most creative and artistic Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner.

I think it's really due to these three series of cartoons that I even care a little about DC characters.  They managed to give the characters a lot more depth than they had (in my mind) before that and had some very interesting plot twists here and there (more so in the Justice League series than the other two).  But my absolutely favorite moment of the series is when Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent meet.  Not because of any fanboy gushing or anything, but solely because for some reason the artists always drew Bruce Wayne's eyes as irises with no pupils and Clark Kent's eyes as pupils with no irises.  I don't know why that cracks me up so much, but it does.


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