How Superman: The Animated Series Avoided the 'Cornball' Man of Steel

Welcome to a special Adventure(s) Time installment, a look at animated heroes of the past. This week, we're revisiting the development of the other adaptation of a classic DC hero from the team of Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Alan Burnett. It's not as flashy as Batman Beyond. It lacks the spectacle of Justice League Unlimited. And it's just not as iconic as Batman: The Animated Series.

But, darn it, Superman: The Animated Series is a solid show, and likely one of the finest representations of the character in this era. Developing the show, however, was also no easy task.

RUNS AROUND IN UNDERWEAR...

In the Modern Masters book series, Bruce Timm is interviewed by Eric Nolen-Weathington. It's an expansive interview, covering his influences, his early years in animation, and Russ Heath falling asleep at his drawing board. The period following Batman's cancellation and Superman's production is also covered. Timm recalls Steven Spielberg calling the crew, expressing his admiration for Batman. Spielberg was curious about an adventure cartoon, but wasn't sure what he wanted. The crew was asked to pitch concepts, and Spielberg would pick the one he liked best.

Timm pitched a "futuristic, Star Wars-type show about a smuggler/space pirate, and another was a teenage, Jonny Quest-type show." He also recalls, for variety's sake, pitching a superhero show. This became Freakazoid, a comedy series about a "manic, insane superhero" and his bizarre adventures. Development of the series leaned far more towards comedy than adventure, not Timm's vision. Timm was thinking Steve Ditko, while Spielberg was going back to the Animaniacs well.

Timm states he prefers the second season (which was "more Monty Python") to the first. Still, he didn't feel connected with the material. Curious about a new project, he jumped at the opportunity to adapt Superman.

SUPERMAN LIVES (OR SO THEY THOUGHT)

Anticipating a mid-'90s Superman feature film, Warner Brothers green-lit the weekly animated series. (A screenplay from Kevin Smith was already in the works. There's no shortage of info on this fiasco available.) Bringing in Timm, Dini, and Burnett was, of course, a no-brainer. Translating the Man of Steel from comics to screen wasn't the seamless transition you might expect, though.

"I knew immediately what to do with Batman, whereas as Superman I wasn't quite sure what to do with him," Timm tells Nolen-Weathington. Timm cites the often-held belief that Superman doesn't "make as much sense in the modern world" and his fear the hero could become "a cornball anachronism."

In an interview with Wizard, Timm bluntly stated that he viewed most of Superman’s villains as dull. Finding a psychological angle for Superman was also difficult for the crew. The production stated their desire to avoid “old, weird, goofy” Superman stories from the Silver Age, thinking a'90s audience wouldn't buy them. (Within a few months, Alan Moore would, well, prove them wrong with his Supreme revamp.)

One battle the team was willing to fight--that awful mullet. After “long, drawn-out negotiations” with DC, the creators were free to avoid Superman's daring fashion makeover for the '90s.

OUT OF TIME

Timm tells Nolen-Weathington that finding the visual style for Superman was tough. "We couldn't quite agree on a general approach to the show," in terms of creating a modern Superman. At one point, Timm played with going even more retro than Batman. "I toyed around with the idea of making it almost a dead-on adaptation of the Siegel & Shuster look." Specifically, Timm wanted to recreate the look of the classic Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1940s.

Some early concept art exists. There's even a Timm sketch of Lois Lane with a 1940s hairstyle and dress out there. Ultimately, he scrapped the idea. The Fleischers had already done this "to perfection," and why compete against genuine legends if you don't have to?

The final look of the show still had classic deco influences, but with more of a look to the future. Timm describes the design as "bright, futuristic, optimistic, ocean liner art deco...much more in line with Superman's character."

NEXT PAGE: It Took Bruce Timm a Long Time to Get Superman's Look Just Right

NO ONE BRAVER

The specific character model for Superman remained a challenge for Timm, however. "I did zillions and zillions and zillions of drawings" he tells Nolen-Weathington. "I just couldn't quite nail him down in the powerful, iconic image like we had done with Batman." He describes going with everything from cleanly heroic to "kind of creepy looking." Nothing clicked.

Inspiration came in the oddest of places. Director Dan Riba brought to work one day a tape of 1963's The Mighty Hercules. Produced on an ultra-cheap budget by Adventure Cartoon Productions, no one views this as a classic of the genre. (Youtube has several episodes archived.) The design of Hercules spoke to Timm, however, becoming his inspiration for their modern Superman.

SOMETHING'S...MISSING

Fans of Batman: The Animated Series knew what to expect, with the same crew producing a Superman series. At the very least, we'd have a stylized opening credit sequence. Then, a gorgeous title card painting, representing the episode's theme. Well, about that...

The crew actually didn't have time to produce an original opening for the series, instead pulling clips from the early episodes. They're all nicely animated (in general, the animation quality for the show is near-excellent.) But, still, nothing as stylized and cool as the Batman opening. Apparently, the producers realized while assembling the clips that they didn't have the iconic image of Clark Kent opening his shirt to reveal the "S" emblem. This was rectified by a few seconds of new animation; along with an original silhouette shot of Superman flying above Metropolis. They look great--too bad nothing else about the opening is new.

Regarding the painted title cards...blame Todd McFarlane. Following Batman's cancellation, some key figures departed Warner Brothers. Eric Radomski, the animator who developed Batman's look with Bruce Timm, was also responsible for those famous title cards. By 1996, Radomski was no longer at Warner Brothers. Instead, he'd been hired by HBO to shepherd the troubled production of Todd McFarlane's Spawn into completion.

Regardless of those missing elements, Superman: The Animated Series soon developed a devoted following. Reviews were uniformly positive, even if Superman lacked the edge and psychological drama of its predecessor. One comics legend, however, one vocal in his love of Batman: The Animated Series, was not a fan.

FAN MAIL

Timm tells the story of Alex Toth's reaction to Brian Saner Lamken in the inaugural issue of the fanzine Comicology:

He really loved the first series of Batman that we did. So that was cool; I wrote him a fan letter, and he wrote me a fan letter back...I was floating on Cloud Nine for a week. But when we did the Superman show, he got all bent out of shape that we didn't do it exactly like the Fleischers did; he thought that we updated the character too much, which is kinda bizarre, 'cause we really didn't.

If I had it to do over again, I'd update the character more — I think that the show would have been more successful if we had reinvented [things] a little bit...The reason why we didn't make it Fleischeresque is that I didn't want anybody to literally put it side-by-side with the old Fleischer shorts and say, "They're just doing a third-rate knockoff of the Fleischers."

But Alex got really bent out of shape about it. I'd write back to him explaining why I did what I did, and it went back and forth, two or three exchanges, and then I just stopped hearing from him. I didn't hear from him for about a year & a half...I sent him [Batman Animated] as a Christmas present, and I wrote in there a little note saying, "Alex, I hope that we can agree to disagree and still be friends." And he wrote me back this postcard that started out nice and ended nice, and in the middle was just full of poison. It starts off with "Thank you for that unexpected gift, blah blah blah blah blah, Yes, We must agree to disagree, because I think you're wrecking Batman!"

NO ONE EVER LEARNS ANYTHING

Amazingly, 2019 will mark the twenty-third anniversary of the show. And the debate over Superman's portrayal, the anxiety about the public viewing him as "cornball" continues to this day. Warner Brothers essentially threw several million dollars into a well, thinking Superman could be reinvented as a brooding, conflicted hero with messianic issues. All they had to do was go back to one of their own productions. Or, crazy thought, hire one of the creators who have already proven themselves on the character. Superman wasn't a perfect show, but it overcame some major hurdles in its development, and remains the highest-quality action cartoon you'll find in the post-Batman era.

So that’s all for now. Special thanks to Eric Nolen-Weathington and Brian Saner Lamken for their interviews. And to Bruce Timm, for being so open. The Comicology interview has disappeared from the Internet...but here's an archived version I've located. A great read.

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