It's Saturday morning, so I thought I'd devote an entry to Saturday Morning superhero cartoons of the 1960's. This week's episode hails from Filmation's New Adventures of Superman; an episode entitled "The Return of Brainiac". To be honest, I watched most of this Superman with my 4-year-old son, and consequently missed big chunks of what was going on . I therefore must have missed when Brainiac showed up the FIRST time.
This cartoon was awesome. Although it was a pretty straight forward "Oh no! We've been shrunk! What do we do?" story, it had some very nice touches. For some reason (I'm thinking money) Filmation chose not to have Brainiac speak in this cartoon. It made him REALLY creepy. Also, there's a disturbing moment when Superman overcomes Brainiac by staring at him with his heat vision until the diodes pop right out of his head, causing him to shut down and collapse. I mean, I know he's just an android. But he's a SENTIENT android. Yeeesh!
According to the DVD extras, Filmation was just a small animation company that did TV commercials before they bid on this cartoon. The success of this series actually paved the way for over 20 years of Saturday morning goodness from Filmation.
I was just 3 when the series launched, so it wasn't until it was in syndication in the mid 70's when I finally, truly discovered the show. Awesome stuff. I even bought a DVD set not too long ago (covers only the first season, unfortunately). The closing theme kicks butt.
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