PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*
There's not a lot more to say about the second and third seasons of the Filmation SUPERMAN that I didn't say about Season One. None of the episodes introduce any further characters taken from the Superman comics, although the episode "Superman Meets His Match" pits the hero against his only Kryptonian opponent, a mindless humanoid beast whom Superman must defeat more by guile than might. (Like all the other Filmation aliens, the Kryptonian critter is poorly designed; they shoulda adapted the comics-monster known as The Flame-Dragon from Krypton.)
Sixteen new Superman episodes were produced, which I assume aired in the same format as Season One, with a Superboy episode sandwiched between two Supermans. (As with the previous DVD, no Superboys are included here, which I view as no great loss.) For the third and last season, the same format was kept except that all the Superman episodes were two-parters, in which the first part would be a cliffhanger, followed a Superboy short, and then concluding with the second half of the Superman story.
Possibly the most interesting thing about the last two seasons is the listing order of the episodes, given that I don't think that the order as presented on the discs and on Wikipedia is veracious. Is it really logical that Filmation would have aired an episode called "The Return of Brainiac," and then only issued Superman's first encounter with the computerized villain in Season 2? Or that Filmation would debut their version of The Prankster not in the one episode devoted to him-- listed as belonging to Season 2-- but in the first villain team-up, "Men from APE," which is allotted to Season One? Having been about eleven or twelve when these seasons aired, I seem to remember seeing the Prankster in his one solo episode BEFORE seeing him in the team-up. On a related note, though I watched the show repeatedly, I never saw a local broadcast of two second-season episodes, "The Halyah of the Himalyas" and "The Atomic Superman." I would have remembered the latter had I seen it, since it was largely a beat-for-beat remake of a Superboy comics-original, "The Atomic Superboy."
I very much enjoyed the cliffhanger-format of Season 3 back in the day, since the hero was more often placed in real jeopardy. Strangely, even though there's an episode with the Warlock in which he directly states that his magic can't harm Superman, two other episodes feature the Man of Steel being strongly affected by magic. In the winsomely titled tale "The Japanese Sandman," the titular villain almost causes the hero to fall into slumber with his magic sands. And in the Scotland-set "The Ghost of Kilbane Castle," a Scottish specter plays his ectoplasmic bagpipes to deprive Superman of his flying-power. (Love the heavy Scots accent: "Hoot! A flying man! Me magic pipes'll bring him doon.")
Speaking of accents, in "Japanese Sandman" Clark and Jimmy visit Japan on assignment, and all four Japanese characters-- two villains and two almost-victims-- speak accented English dialogue. If this DVD gets any woke reviews online, they will probably claim that the mere presence of accents makes the episode racist. For the record, there's no ill intent signaled by the accents; the producers most likely imagined that the audience would not expect foreign nationals to speak English with absolute perfection. The Sandman of the story is more or less a malignant genie, and his name comes from a 1920 American song. But though there was no such Sandman-figure in Japanese mythology, curiously a Japanese boxer adopted "Japanese Sandman" for his billing in 1930.
One other trivia-tidbit: in contrast to Season One, Lois Lane suspects Clark's identity in two separate stories, though nothing special comes of these moments.
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