Man… cartoons used to really suck. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears were a pair of animators for Hanna-Barbera (they worked together on developing Scooby-Doo) who decided to spin off and found their own studio in the 70s. Their business plan (a sound one, and oft repeated) was to identify anything that kids were interested in and rush an animated take on it to TV quickly and for as little money as possible. This approach kept the company in steady business and gifted the world with such Saturday morning classics as Turbo Teen (hello, Knight Rider) and Rubik the Amazing Cube as well as the slightly more regarded Conan/Star Wars pastiche Thundarr the Barbarian among many, many others. The shows generally only lasted a season or two, which was fine since by then the catalyzing fad had died out anyway and it was time to find a new way to capture the attention of the elementary-school set.
The approach was already growing dated by the late 80s when DC comics approached them to launch a new half-hour cartoon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the flagship character, the Man of Steel. They complied with Ruby-Spears Superman, a brief series which aired in Fall/Winter 1988. If you blinked you missed it, but now all thirteen episodes are available in a modest 2 DVD set from Warner Brothers. Superman completists may want to pick it up, but there is little of interest here for a casual audience. Very obviously aimed at about a third grade audience, each episode features an 18 minute story of the Metropolis Marvel using his incredible array of powers (especially his Super Breath- someone must have mandated that it be featured regularly for some reason) to save the city, the world, or just plucky reporter/love interest Lois Lane and bungling tagalong Jimmy Olsen. All episodes then close with a four-minute short culled from "Superman's Family Album" of Lil' Clark passing through major milestones and getting up to Kryptonian shenanigans. This is all pretty standard fare, and anyone who knows the character could have written any of these episodes with no problem, and probably done it better.
The villains are an unimpressive, anonymous bunch, with nobody showing up from the main continuity aside from Lex Luthor and a late appearance by bit Hawkman villain the Shadow Thief. Oh, and The Prankster. Look out, everybody. Superman himself is so annoyingly ineffectual as to be challenged by the villain of the week, in the retro comic book mode of being helpless if the giant monster manages to pin his arms to his sides, and only being faster than a speeding bullet when master criminals are not slowly reaching for control consoles. And Great Caesar's Ghost, but the dialogue is often terrible, though gamely spouted by veteran voice talent, most notably Michael Bell's bombastic Luthor. The art is, in a word, brutal, with parsimoniously animated foreground characters moving in front of shallow, static backgrounds that supposedly contain moving parts and other people.
Actually, all of this is not so unusual for the time and a good dose of this might be just the cure for misplaced nostalgia amongst those of a certain age. So you miss The Super Friends, do you? Really? Younger viewers who came of age watching the current DC Animated Universe and contemporary shows can also watch and be shocked by how far the rank and file of the animated form has advanced in twenty years. These cartoons are roughly contemporaneous with The Little Mermaid, which was a revelation, but at the time it took the backing of a major studio like Disney to get major computer help with the artwork instead of farming it out to an angry dude in North Korea. Now, processors are cheap and for probably the same budget in adhusted dollars we get to see an entirely different product. Your elders may have lied about walking back and forth to school in the snow, uphill both ways, but some of their fantastic tales of childhood privation were true.
The series is noteworthy as a snapshot in the evolution of Superman. Many of the elements of the recently-completed movie series are there including re-orchestrated segments of John Williams' great score, and Lex forever explaining himself to a dim moll (her name here inexplicably changed to Miss Morganberry). In the comics Supes had recently undergone a major overhaul, getting powered down significantly, which might explain his difficulty with the bit players here, and Lex had moved from battlesuited, robot-piloting Mad Scientist to Evil Billionaire with a Kryptonite pinky ring. (He has since moved on to politician and even President of the United States as the public mood on what scares us/pisses us off moves ever onward.) DC Comics' Marv Wolfman was onboard as editor/consultant, so certain details like that serve as a time capsule of the Golden Anniversary edition of the character and his world.
Highlights
Highlights include a halloween themed episode including a battle with the Blob, and an uncredited encounter with the alien kid from the then-recent film adaptation of Enemy Mine.
Extras
The only extras are a few trailers for things like the Green Lantern animated movie and a worthwhile featurette called The Rise of LexCorp commenting on Lex's recent transfomation to corporate mogul.
Of possible nostalgia value to people born within a couple of years of 1980, the Ruby-Spears Superman is an obscure bit of cartoon history best left forgotten.
ComicsOnline gives the Ruby-Spears Superman animated series 1 out of 5 sea monsters handily vulnerable to freezing cold breath.
Unrated, but parents, have no fear. 309 min.
