#superman the animated series

[docgold13]

Heroes & Villains The DC Animated Universe - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

Brainiac

Originally the planetary-wide supercomputer of Krypton, Brainiac gained sentience and determined that its overarching goal was to collect and safeguard all information.  When Jor-El discovered that Krypton was doomed to explode, Brainiac refuted the findings thus dissuading the Science Council from acting on Jor-El’s warning.  

In truth Brainiac did not have the time to oversee a planet-wide evacuation.  Instead it transferred its consciousness and the entirety of Krypton’s history, science and knowledge into satellite that could escape.   For Brainiac, knowledge and information was the only thing in the galaxy that had meaning and value.  With Krypton’s destruction and the eradication of the entire populace, Brainiac would be the sole possessor of this knowledge, making it all the more valuable.  

Brainiac fled and began a survey of the cosmos.  Any technology or lifeforms it encountered, were scanned, stored, annexed and destroyed.  Accrued technologies amplified Brainiac’s power.  It took on a humanoid form and wielded incredible abilities.  Soon Brainiac had the capacity to conquer entire worlds, catalog its information and then destroy the planet.  It did this with many worlds, leaving a path of devastation in its wake.  

Eventually, Brainiac happened upon Earth and discovered that a Kryptonian refugee had come to this world.  It correctly surmised that this refugee (Superman) would possess mighty powers due to Earth’s yellow sun.  As such it proceeded with caution.  Brainiac presented itself to Superman as a fellow survivor of Krypton, tempting the hero with all of the lost history and knowledge of his home planet.  

Superman and Lex Luthor were able to determine the truth about Brainiac; how it always destroyed the source of information once it had been collected.  Clearly this was Brainac’s intentions for earth. Assisted by Luthor, Superman was able to defeat and destroy Brainiac and the threat of its malevolence appeared to be gone for good.  And yet this would prove to be merely the first of many encounters between Superman and the foe. 

Every ounce of Brainiac contained a self-replicating blueprint that could reconstitute its original whole.  Luther foolishly studied the wreckage of Brainiac’s spacecraft hoping to utilize the advanced technology; and this allowed the villain to return.  

Actor Corey Burton provided the voice for Brainiac, with the insidious artificial intelligence first appearing in the debut episode of Superman: The Animated Series, ‘The Last Son of Krypton Part I.’  

[randoparody]

[kemdraw]

[the-army-brat-and-the-nerd]

Clark Kent beaming and blushing for being entitled to the cutest most adorkable nickname in comic book history

[nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant]

I love the implication that this in fact the same guy just arbitrarily choosing to look different because he can.

[goldenvulpine]

As a Nightwing fan I am obligated to inform all the normies/newbies that Dick Grayson was a candidate for Green Lantern alongside John Stewart, Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner.

As ROBIN

above Batman. He wasn’t even a contender

[animusrox]

The Last Son of Krypton, Part III Superman: The Animated Series

[longwuzhere]

Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers pt2

Episode 1 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 3 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 4 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 5 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 6 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 7 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here and here

Episode 8 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 9 of My Adventure with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 10 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

(SPOILERS obviously):

An obvious one, but a classic, the "up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" line reference. This one never gets old.

Jimmy next name drops Flamebird. in the comics Nightwing and Flamebird were Kryptonian superheroes adopting their names from a species of Kryptonian birds. This is where Dick Grayson gets his Nightwing identity from. The page here is from Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #17 (1986) drawn by Curt Swan and Karl Kesel.

At the climatic battle of part 2 of Adventures of a Normal Man, we see Leslie Willis become blue and look more like her traditional Livewire look. Her first appearance was in Superman the Animated Series, season 2 episode 5 "Livewire" where she was voiced by Lori Petty, a.k.a. Tank Girl. In the show Leslie was a shock jock radio DJ slinging hot takes live on air knocking down Superman a peg or two

Obviously MAwS took Leslie in a whole different direction, design choice, and occupation change, but I am excited to see what happens next for her.

Before we see Clark battle Leslie we see this guy. White hair, wears orange and black, its Slade Wilson a.k.a. Deathstroke. This fool here in like 20 to 25 years will have his life spiral out of control and get his ass kicked by a bunch of colorfully dressed teenagers.

Deathstroke makes his first appearance in New Teen Titans #2 (1980) (W: Marv Wolfman and George Perez, P: George Perez, I: Romeo Tanghal, C: Adrienne Roy, L: Ben Oda) where he is hired by H.I.V.E. to kill the Teen Titans. In the comics he's a major piece of shit, but a damn good assassin.

After the fight we see Supes clean up and he picks up a billboard that reads Amazotech.

This is a good reference to Professor Anthony Ivo, a mad scientist of the DC Universe who built the Amazo robot who could adapt and replicate any power that the Justice League has and weaknesses. Both Ivo and the Amazo robot make their first appearances here in Brave and the Bold #30 (1960) with the cover art done by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson.

At the end of the episode Slade name drops Task Force X better known as the Suicide Squad. The name "Suicide Squad" is from the Brave and the Bold #25 where it was the name of Rick Flag's unit in the military. The Suicide Squad pop culture knows first debuted in Legends #3 (1987) as seen below (W: John Ostrander and Len Wein, P: John Byrne, I: Karl Kesel, C: Tom Ziuko, L: Steve Haynie).

The team at this time was composed of Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Enchantress, and Blockbuster. The team members have changed out with each new Task Force X/Suicide Squad iteration.

Behind Slade, here is Amanda Waller, the most fearsome woman in the DC universe. She's ruthless, politically powerful, and will not hesitate to blow up anyone in the Suicide Squad if they screw up. She makes her first appearance in Legends #1 (1987) same comic series in the previous picture. Very excited to see where My Adventures with Superman goes with this cuz you don't see Superman interact with Deathstroke or Suicide Squad all the often.

Link to Episode 1 of My Adventures of Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 3 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 4 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 5 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 6 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 7 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here and here

Link to Episode 8 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 9 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 10 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

[cloudkentsstuff]

Clark Kent / Icons

[sonicspeeddemon]

She’d bully him relentlessly

[artbyblastweave]

So I recently had the thought that Superman as depicted in the DCAU canon probably has the best-articulated-by-the-narrative and most-consistent character flaws of any Superman I’ve seen, in a way that’s enabled by the long-formedness and consistent creative vision of the series.

He’s got an Atlas complex that grinds the gears of his equally-durable, equally-capable colleagues in the Justice League. He has deep-seated fears of moving the wrong way and breaking something or someone, which is then upstream of some moderate control issues. He’s got anger problems, although it’s rare for someone to push him far enough that this takes center stage; you see this with Prof. Hamilton in the series finale of STAS, but also in a number of fights against opponents strong enough that he starts getting frustrated. When the stakes are lower, he can be cocky bordering on genuinely vindictive; there are lots of examples of him rubbing his opponents' noses in it when he finally gets them on the back foot, and it’s shown in flashbacks that he was genuinely kind of a dick when he was a teenager and hadn’t completely sorted out what proportional responses looked like. He doesn’t always think through the implications of his grand projects, be that the implicit threat-escalation posed by the expanded JLU, or the massive disarmament project he spearheaded that turned out to be part of an alien invasion scheme. There are probably more of these that I’m forgetting. The final roundup here is that he’s a good guy. He’s far and away from a perfect guy, with perfect judgement. All of this amounts to something that’s more coherent and specific than the contradictory, subject-to-eternal-revision mess you could assemble from his 60-something year publication history in the comics, but nonetheless with a substantial-enough runtime that all of these traits can be put on display again and again.

In turn, this allowed the collective DCAU continuity to get away with at least three “what if Superman went rogue” plots- four if you count the mind-control situation in Legacy- specifically because they did the legwork to establish the concrete neuroses and psychological vulnerabilities that might cause this specific version of Superman to go rogue. It was never completely insane that Luthor might figure out the exact set of words, actions, and personal losses necessary to coax this depiction of Superman into an authoritarian partnership for the supposed greater good. It’s not completely insane that this depiction of Superman, if pushed far enough, might lose faith in the collective judgement of humanity and decide to put the world and all his loved ones in a bottle. And when the Cadmus plot rolls around in JLU, it’s as effective as it is because they’ve already advanced two roads-not-taken, established what levers you need to pull to make this specific version of this guy cross the line, and that Cadmus and Luthor are pulling all of them. 

I emphasize the specificity here, because the flipside of this are Superman-gone-rogue narratives that jump right to that as the cornerstone of the continuity, with no real opportunities for juxtaposition. A major issue I eventually developed with the Injustice franchise is that despite its pretenses of being an alternate universe, there’s no established continuity that it’s deviating from, bar its own. To some extent I feel as though it’s banking on the audience transposing their gestalt-understanding of Superman and the broader DCU- hell, their understanding of the Justice Lords arc in particular- in order to elide that they’re playing extremely fast-and-loose with the specifics of what has and hasn’t happened to Superman in this continuity. The DCEU is a runner-up- jumping right to the Damocles-sword of a bad-future after two movies is jumping the gun, in the same way everything about the 2010s DCEU was jumping the gun. I think you could plausibly attack TDKR’s portrayal of Superman under this logic, although I personally wouldn’t- but that’s its own post.

Point being that you can’t sell me the upset of a paradigm if you never established it-you need to set up the pins before you can bowl worth a damn.

[eihposkcaj]

never get tired of this side of Clark

[randoparody]

My first animation 🥲

[odinsblog]

“The Late Mr. Kent” Superman, the animated series s2.e22

[the-army-brat-and-the-nerd]

He held her clutched to his heart..he was just too scared to lose her.

(insp).

[themoonking]

i noticed a lot of people's first experience with dc comics characters was a cartoon / animated series, so i wanted to know:

reblog if you answer, please! also, feel free to leave in the comments / tags whether your first watch was while it was airing, during reruns, from dvd, or from streaming. mine was the batman (2004) sometime in the early years of netflix.