Ranking Every DC Animated TV Series From Worst To Best
8. Superman (1940s)
This might actually be classed as cheating, seeing as how the Fleischer Studio productions were actually a series of animated shorts and not a conventional animated series. But screw it, it's the most iconic Superman to have ever been put to animation. He's going on the list.
Those who somehow aren't familiar with this series should really do their best to seek it out, and, since all the shorts are freely available in the public domain, they're not exactly difficult to come across.
One of the most important and indeed influential cartoons ever made, Fleischer Studio's animated shorts went on to inspire multiple works in the comic book medium, including the style of Batman: The Animated Series and other subsequent works in the DC Animated Universe.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and the Golden Age of Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled.