Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 3: The Last Son of Krypton, Part III (B)


Previous Installment  |  S:TAS Index  |  Introduction


If you're just now joining us, I'm currently examining every episode of the criminally under-discussed and under-appreciated Superman: The Animated Series, because I think it's the best moving-pictures version of the collective Superman mythos that has ever been done. Here is a link listing all of the posts so far.

Also, because I'm discussing certain animation touches in this post more than normal, I've added some .GIFs! There were some technical difficulties in doing this that delayed the post more than my being sick did. You'll notice that there are little black bars around the .gifs and that they look to be in a slightly squashed aspect ratio, which I promise bothers me more than it does you, but if I spent any more time trying to fix it I'd never get it done. Also, I set the .gifs to output at the frame rate of the source material so that they'd be as smooth and accurate as possible, and then I remembered that some browsers will slow .gifs down if they exceed a certain amount of frames per second, so they may look a little weird in, say, Internet Explorer.

So.

We left off with Superman flying away after saving a plane, and there's a nice transition involving a man recording Superman. We're shown the footage as his camcorder is displaying it, complete with blinking red "REC." Then the show zooms in on the footage until you can't see the "REC" anymore, we hear Perry saying "freeze it!", and the show pulls back out and we're at the Daily Planet, where Perry, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy are watching the video. And the "pause" effect is done really well--and, again, like many details in this show, was not, strictly speaking, "necessary," but it really helps sell it.


"What is that?" Perry asks, gesturing to the screen.