Terror on the Midway

I love the Fleischer Superman cartoons. The animation is smooth and fluid with vivid colors. The distinct art-deco style, vintage science fiction imagery, and use of noirish shadows gave them a look unlike any other cartoons. The music and voice work is superb. They're fun, accessible, enduring animation classics.

The ninth in the series (and last for Fleischer) is a very simple story about Lois and Clark on assignment covering a circus when things go haywire and a large gorilla named Gigantic escapes and begins to attack people. Clark takes his sweet time about it but eventually changes into Superman, where he battles the gorilla, as well as other animals, to restore order to the circus.

I have mixed feelings on this one. There is a certain laziness about the story and, for a nine minute cartoon, it does seem to inexplicably have some padding. Still, the sequences with the animals are well-animated and exciting. It's entertaining, as the whole series is, but clearly something is missing. This would be the last Superman cartoon to be done by Fleischer Studios. Paramount would seize control of the studio, fire Dave and Max Fleischer, and rename it Famous Studios. Many of the same artists and animators would carry over, as would the voice talent. But the Fleischers would no longer be making Superman cartoons.