Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection is currently included with Amazon Prime. The affectionate remembrance has my highest recommendation.
Some short bonus clips not in the movie are available for free on YouTube. This one is about Dave’s devotion to Bettie Page.
An outstanding example of the masterful classic illustrative style of cartooning that I appreciate so much, as seen in the best soap opera strips. The challenge of how to make drawings of people sitting and talking look visually interesting. The inking seems to have been mostly done in pen, then a brush was used to touch up and add black areas.
Note to MIH: Neal Adams was a pen inker. He tried using a brush for line work, but never got the hang of it and gave up.
I’m hoping to direct the attention of some fans to these images. They compare frames from the old SD and the new HD versions of the classic Fleischer Superman cartoon, “The Mechanical Monsters”, as released by Warner. Color differences aside, you will note there is significant cropping in the DVD release, as shown on the left.
Submitted for your consideration, if not approval.
Original Cel (With Additional Elements)
The 2009 DVD That’s Considered “Good”
The 2023 Blu-ray That’s Considered “Terrible”
2009 is on the left, and 2023 is on the right. I admit the background in the HD version looks smeared and soft by comparison.
I submitted some images to Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research group on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/161346744015168
They compare original cel materials with frames from a DVD of the Fleischer/Famous Superman cartoons. The post hasn’t been approved, and I have my doubts that it will be. I previously gave the Max Fleischer Superman Blu-ray from Warner Brothers a favorable review, despite the Archive Collection team being taken off of the project for reasons I don’t know.
The reviews by hardcore fans have been scathing, with the consensus being that, for all its faults, the 2009 Warner DVD is vastly better and truer to the original cartoons. Comparisons between images from the raw HD transfers and the restoration work that was done on them for the Blu-ray release can be seen here.
https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/115440/maxfleischerssuperman.html
The guy who produced this video review goes so far down the proverbial rabbit hole, he’s beyond all reasonable hope of returning.
Here are the images I submitted. My idea is, if the old DVD is preferred over the Blu-ray, how does it compare to the original cels? There aren’t many still in existence, and with an acknowledgment that the paint on the underside of the cels may be faded, they look nothing at all like the colors as presented on the DVD.
My point about the Blu-ray image quality is that it gives an inkling of how the cartoons might have looked if it had been possible to scan the original cels digitally, rather than being photographed in Technicolor. The Technicolor process requires combining three strips of film, one for each primary color, with each layer having its own grain. The Fleischer/Famous Superman cartoons have always seemed especially grainy, compared to other Technicolor cartoons. Not too bad in SD DVD, but revealing to the point of distraction in HD Blu-ray. I’d compare it to the dust that plagued the layers of glass on Disney’s multi-plane camera. Technicolor’s color saturation is appealing, but it can also go too far, along with changes in contrast.
The mastering software used on the Fleischer Superman Blu-ray set has removed Technicolor’s triple-layer grain and subdued some of the candy-coated colors. For better or for worse, the cartoons look nothing like they do in any of the previous releases. This is what makes the latest set interesting to me. There’s a happy outcome yet to be realized, and I agree with the majority opinion in wanting to see the raw transfers done over once again, but this time supervised by Jerry Beck and the Warner Archive Collection team.
Is this a celebration of Black culture, or is it racist?
This is one young person’s opinion of the cartoon.
