Superman Homepage reviewer Micah Pickering reviews the Fleischer Superman animated shorts for those nostalgic for the 1940s.
Check out his review of the cartoon titled “The Magnetic Telescope”.
If someone came up to me on the street and told me about a “magnetic telescope,” a machine in an old cartoon would be the last thing that would come to my mind. A magnetic telescope sounds like something that you might buy off of an infomercial at 3.00am, or out of the back of an old comic book.
It sounds like something that doesn’t work properly and costs too much. That is also a fitting description for the actual magnetic telescope in this cartoon. It doesn’t work properly, and costs too much to use.
Now on to the review!
Rating – 3 (out of 5): Calamity ensues from the very beginning of this cartoon as the magnetic telescope pulls a small comet into the city causing a small meteor shower to damage several areas. The incident is observable from the offices of the Daily Planet, where Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Perry White look on the scene in shock.
The Professor (our villain of the week) tells the police that he plans to study a much larger comet by pulling it in close enough to safely observe. The Professor looks like a combination of old school Lex Luthor, and Dr. Evil from “Austin Powers”. His motivations seem purely scientific, but he does not care about collateral damage.
The police try to stop him from activating the machine, but he does so anyway. When the cops can’t get The Professor to turn it off, they begin to destroy the machine by hacking wires and destroying important structures. By doing so they have doomed Metropolis because now the comet is hurtling towards the city with no way of sending it back into space.
As always Lois goes to get the scoop, and Superman naturally goes after her. When Clark changes into Superman he happens to be in the back of a taxi. I wonder what the taxi driver was thinking when some nerdy reporter started undressing in the back of his taxi. I’m sure stranger things have happened in a taxi, but I’ll leave that up to your imagination dear reader.
Smaller chunks of debris from the comet descend on the city and damage bridges, buildings, and cars on the road. Superman decides that he is going to fly into the comet and send it back into space.
Shockingly, he fails. I had not seen this particular cartoon in a while, but I naturally assumed that Superman would just push the comet back into space like we all expect the Man of Steel to do. Instead he tumbles back down into the city as all seems lost. It is interesting to note that the comet gives off a green glow that made me think of kryptonite. However, this cartoon came a year before kryptonite made its debut on the Superman radio show in 1943.
Superman and Lois are in The Professor’s observatory when they decide to try to use the magnetic telescope to repel the comet before it’s too late.
Superman observes that the lines that connect the machine to its power source have been cut. He resolves that the only way the power can be restored to the telescope is for him to hold the cables and act as a conduit. Superman takes the full force of the machine’s power as electricity surges through him.
Lois flips the switch and the giant horseshoe shaped magnet blasts the comet repelling it back into the cold vacuum of space. It is nice to see that Lois was heavily involved in these early adventures. Media like this would help shape the Lois Lane character into the one we know today.
