Superman (serial) - 1948

So this was my first watch of a Superman serial...and WOW. I'm not sure what even to say or where to start. But I'll give it a try!

The story starts on Krypton where Jor-El is trying to convince others their world is in danger. He's making a small space ship, but no one else believes there's any danger. When Jor-El is proved right by the planet blowing up, a cartoon takes the baby Superman to Earth.

So that was the first hint animation was going to play a part in this film. So, a cartoon tornado attempts to kill Clark's father, and then once he's grown, his parents have a conversation about who Clark is and where he's from. Then, the narrator randomly mentions his adoptive parents both died, and Clark heads to the city to use his powers for good.

After that, Spider Lady causes issues around town while Superman takes off his suit and cartoons himself into the air. So, anytime he flies he turns into a cartoon. It's weird and jarring. He smiles when bullets bounce off his chest. And I hated the way they would zoom into his face when he used his x-ray vision.

Overall, so many weird things happened. The scientist knew the kryptonite was the one thing that could hurt Superman, but he's like, "I'll do tests on it for two days, then throw it in the ocean." Seriously? And I'm going to ignore the usual "why doesn't anyone notice that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person?" question. My questions revolve around why no one called the police when they should have, and where Clark kept all these clothes. So, when the criminals show up for restricted materials, who does the man call? Perry White of the Daily Planet! Makes sense to me! Also, when cartoon Superman would land in places, sometimes there were clothes waiting for him and other times he just left clothes out in the wilderness, I suppose.

Overall, I missed the scrum-fights. Superman liked to pick up two guys at once and bang their heads together. It didn't feel like it had the high stakes of some of the others I've watched, which was also disappointing. I think part of that was due to the whole "Spider Lady" villain. She was weird and didn't use her web much. Wasted prop in my opinion. Anyway, I made it through to the end, but most of the people were irritating. Lois was a poo the entire time, Jimmy kept getting himself into dangerous situations and knocked out immediately, and Clark just leaped around and turned into a cartoon. Strange...