Originally Posted by
TaliaJoy
As far as the DCAU is concerned, I only really know its Superman from Superman: The Animated Series, which I've watched almost in full, while I've watched barely any JL and no JLU. I used to really like S:TAS, but over time I've found it more and more underwhelming. Not bad, a "high quality product" overall, but not a very compelling take on the character or mythos either, to the point where I feel kind of negatively towards it. It doesn't help that I've now watched some of Batman: The Animated Series to compare it to, because sakes alive, B:TAS is WAY better than S:TAS (even though I'm more interested in Supes than Bats). The broad strokes of Superman's personality and portrayal feel roughly right, but in the details there's a lot that's not quite there. This may be somewhat hard to describe, but I've noticed that its Superman doesn't have the best emotional range, he seems "vaguely angry and determined" the vast majority of the time with episodes of "mildly jocular". Now, in theory I really like Superman being angry and jocular, but for one thing, it's tiring to see him rarely enter into other modes for any length of time, and for another, they don't go far enough even with those emotions to actually be interesting or compelling - hence the "vaguely" and "mildly". Of course, there's the obvious fact that this Superman gets beat up way too much, to the point where it almost feels like doing "damage control" on the very concept of Superman, as though being super-powerful and invincible is an inherent problem that needs to be fixed. I get needing to keep him challenged, and I don't mind a less powerful Superman in general, but this show is wrongheaded and overkill in its attempts to do so. I also think that it's one of the poorest versions of Clark Kent I've see thus far, simply because he's so boring it feels like they put as little effort as they could manage into his portrayal. The supporting cast doesn't get much effort put into them or chance to shine either. And there's just a current of being relatively uninteresting that runs throughout the whole show. There's not much of an interesting vision for the character, more just trying to make a generic, functional and non-objectionable version of Superman, rather than aspiring for anything more.