Fans of Superman have another reason to smile as an animated gem from the 1980’s has finally come to DVD. Released in November, this production of Superman compliments the mythos of the Man of Steel. These half hour episodes ran on CBS back in 1988 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Big Blue Boy Scout and consisted of 18 minute episodes concluding with a four minute short called “Superman’s Family Album”.
The Ruby-Spears Superman, though geared toward the Saturday morning sugar cereal crowd, wasn’t done in camp but for true fans of this DC Comics staple. The production staff was even headed by Marv Wolfman who, along with John Byrne, wrote for Superman comics in 1986. Wolfman is credited changing Superman’s number one nemesis, Lex Luthor from an evil scientist to that of a billionaire industrialist bent on world domination. The show also introduced the world to Lexcorp.
The show retained some of the staples that have come to be associated with Superman including the John Williams theme from the 1978 movie as well as the opening lines from the 1950’s Superman television show, “Faster than a speeding bullet….etc.” The show itself had typical 1980’s style animation though patterned after the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons with character designs based on Gil Kane. The art was a step above He-Man but not really any better than any other cartoon on American television at the time.
Story wise this version of Superman tries to balance stories that young children could understand with plots that older viewers could appreciate. The stories branched out from just daily destruction of Metropolis 
into the outer reaches of space. The series actually had more episodes set in space than on Earth. It is hard to say if the reasoning for all of the space episodes where to pull in the younger viewers or if the producers were trying capitalize on other space-centric properties.
This version of Superman lasted a short 13 episodes due to a poor time slot, 8:30am and a very high licensing fee. According to Joe Ruby one of the executive producers of the show, “I think the problem with us was our timeslot. It turned out the 8:30 in the morning was a killer for Superman. Only the little kids were up and they don’t understand Superman as well as the older kids. It wasn’t for the 4-5 year olds.” So ultimately it wasn’t Lex Luthor who got the best of the the last son of Krypton it was the early morning. That is the killer for many of us.
Bottom line is that this version of Superman is a must see for fans of this cornerstone in the DC universe. I found the series enjoyable and a bit nostalgic. This is a great addition for your collection, especially for the completest. You can pick up this 2 disc set for under 30 bucks. The 13 episodes have a run time of 309 minutes with a standard full screen aspect ratio. This release has subtitles in both English and French. The Ruby-Spears Superman is released by Warner Brothers. Great Caesar’s ghost, get out and pick this up!
