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DEE-VEE-DEE REVIEW! SUPERMAN, AMERICA'S SUPERHERO VOL. 2 (Director's Cut Productions)

Sheesh, here's another one of those cheapo public domain crankouts showin' the same old same old that has not only been aired on tee-vee for ages, but packaged and re-packaged on slow-speed VHS tapes hawked at flea markets usually with a quality that would suggest that these were assembled by slave labor in Mexico and smuggled over the border disguised as dirty comic books.

But the quality is good enough and well, best of all the material found herein is something that should make most BLOG TO COMM readers happy the same way they were when they were mere turdlers and their fave cartoon show was poppin' up on the idiot box making for a nice backdrop to a keep middle Amerigan upbringing. Happy that there's still a world where one can see the well-circulated PD THREE STOOGES shorts (including "Brideless Groom" with the infamous "Cousin Basil" scene!) or "Our Gang Follies of 1938 via some old Interstate Television print that hasn't been circulated since the mid-sixties! Or (guess what!) these old Fleisher-era SUPERMAN cartoons which had been talked about for eons but only made their way into our minds around 1980 when MATINEE AT THE BIJOU was smart enough to gather all of those classic and long-buried shorts and b-features and slap 'em onna same frequency usually devoted to boring English dramas and chic lefto propaganda. Well, better my tax bucks go toward some old Educational Pictures short than TONGUES UNTIED, ifyaknowaddamean...

Hokay, there are only eight SUPERMAN shorts on this second volume and I will not watch two of 'em because they're anti-Japanese and I think the Japanese are cool enough people at least when they're making cartoons or holding orchestral concerts with young nude gals playin' and conductin', but ya just can't deny the quality and overall power that these cartoons provide. For one who grew up with the Saturday morning SUPERMAN cartoons which I remember were fine in their own cardboard way these early efforts really affect me just like when I was a kid and could tell the cool World War II-era BUGS BUNNY cartoons that were on early Saturday AM from the noon BUGS BUNNY SHOW that introduced me to the concept of portable holes. Good, but a certain amount of soul was missing from those late-fifties vintage efforts that abounded in most animation of a decade earlier.

But most of all, when I watch these early-forties SUPERMANs I kinda let my mind drift watching the amazing animation and technicolor as the music roars on, choking up over the fact that the art techniques, the sound and the passion has been long gone and even those baby boomer geeks who used to eat up old tee-vee and mooms back inna seventies and eighties seemingly couldn't care less about these brilliant, life-reaffirming cartoons anymore.

Besides the SUPERMANs ya get a buncha old BETTY BOOPs, POPEYEs, FELIX THE CATs and a GUMBY, not to mention five CLUTCH CARGOs making for the best recreation of a suburban slob turdler youth one can think of. All you have to do is wear your Doctor Dentons and splatter that bowl of CAP'N CRUNCH all over the living room carpet to get the full effect. If you can get mom to yell at you it's all the better!

Sheesh, I never thought I'd be corny enough to say it, but I miss the world these were made in. 'n if you don't, boy will my revenge be even sweeter...