February 19, 2014

  • Superman Gets Animated: La-La Land's New 4-disc Set!

    One of the huge releases from La-La Land this year must certainly be this massive limited edition collection of music from Superman: The Animated Series and The New Superman/Batman Adventures.  These latter 1990s series continued the great work of animated television music that Shirley Walker had created for Batman: The Animated Series and her team of composers (Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis, Kris Carter, and Harvey Cohen) helped insure that these programs had some great musical support.  Most of the team here, minus Cohen, would work on DC Comics Batman: The Brave and the Bold which also saw a 2-disc release from this label concurrently.  With over five hours (!) of musical material, one cannot attempt to be terribly exhaustive, though a few comments are certainly in order about the release and its content.

    First up, is the main title that Shirley Walker created for Superman: The Animated Series.  The music was used during the series’ first season (1996-1997) but subsequently dropped when the show was aired as The New Superman/Batman Adventures.  (It was put back for subsequent video release of the episodes. )  Of course, that main title is also included and is used to bookend the music on disc two.  Other nice touches are the original end credits and a few promo cues that help start or conclude a disc, plus a fuller presentation of the theme as used for the video end credits.  A few additional “bonus” tracks are sprinkled throughout.

    Disc One focuses mostly on the three-part episode, The Last Son of Krypton including a bonus track of music and effects.  Essentially a feature-length program when edited together, the storyline begins the story arc that follows the birth of Kal-El and the last days of Krypton as the baby is sent to earth.  The music tends to only hint at the primary Superman theme in music that is both epic for larger action sequences, and equally touching for moments with Kal-El’s family (a dedicated “Family Theme” presents this music).  The first part of this music focuses on the conflict between Jor-El and Brainiac.  There is an interesting electronic idea that occasionally flits over the music suggesting appropriate menace along with dark dissonant harmony.  A more Williams-esque style sort of asserts itself in the central episode with great brass writing and many skittering strings that really soars in “Clark’s First Flight”.  The final episode tends to create a variety of interesting off-kilter melodic ideas and interesting use of tension building devices with drone ideas alongside big symphonic adventure music.  The team of Ritmanis, McCuistion, and Cohen each take one of these sections and manage to build on the previous musical ideas over the course of this story arc.  Two additional episodes (“Monkey Fun” and “Tools of the Trade”) fill out this portion of the release.  “Monkey Fun” adds some appropriate jungle feel with an increase in percussion effects resulting inreally interesting action music in tracks like “Monkey Business/Babysitting with Fleas/Bacteria Attack.”  In “Tools of the Trade”, themes are introduced for several characters (Turpin, Kanto, and Darkseid) which will become further developed throughout a larger story arc

    Disc Two focuses on music from the three-part “World’s Finest” from season two which features the Joker, and music from “Myxzpixilated”, which introduced the character Mr. Myxzptlk, and “Father’s Day”, the first episode to feature an entire score by Walker.  There is a fun little “bonus” here written as background string quartet music.  Fans will appreciate the appearance of the Joker (with its Elfman-esque bounce) and Batman themes from the Batman: The Animated Series as well as new thematic material for Lex Luthor and a jazzy love theme for the relationship of Bruce and Lois Lane throughout the “World’s Finest” selections.  It is marks one of the first integrated collaborations for McCuistion and Ritmanis.  There are some interesting electronic/theremin-like sounds (first appearing in “Joker Undoes Carlini”) as well as some great large-scale orchestral music.  Cohen’s music for “Myxzpixilated” is another great highlight running the gamut of Stalling-esque cartoon styles to Mancini (for some source music in an apartment sequence) and even a little Herrmann.  Walker’s score adds more rhythm percussion and some guitar ideas to give the music more of an edge at times.

    For discs three and four, we move into music from episodes that focused on additional characters: Green Lantern (“In Brightest Day”, which received an Emmy nomination and is the source for the theme that would be used in Justice League as well as featuring some large orchestral scoring); Lex Luthor and Mercy Graves (“A Little Piece of Home”, which revisits Walker’s Lex Luthor theme and features some jazzy music as well); “Livewire” (showcasing more electric guitar and rock styles);  Darkseid, Orion, and New Genesis (“Apokolips…Now”, a fascinating blend of a variety of character themes with hero action music and even a little noir-ish style); Kara/Supergirl (“Little Girl Lost”, another Emmy nomination, and featuring some excellent Copland-style Americana and Williams-esque writing, as well as some interesting percussion and electronic additions); and Parasite (“Feeding Time”, an episode with a more involved score with interesting rhythmic challenges and intensity).  Disc four culminates a story arc involving Darkseid in the two-part “Legacy”.  The score is easily among one of her most brilliant equally paralleling her work for Mask of the Phantasm.  The amazing orchestral writing is often quite stunning to hear and one cannot help but feel that the world lost such a talent way too soon!

    The massive presentation here includes a good booklet with information related to each episode and identification of who worked on what project, or whose music was included in a given sequence.  Air dates and summaries are also all here.  This time, the booklet features all the track title labels while the back of the package lists episodes and track numbers which works very well for a quick glance.  The music is all great superhero music and fans of the genre will certainly find much to enjoy.  Each of the contributors for these scores finds a way to create music that is uniquely their own, while also managing to provide some connection to the style setup for the series as a whole.  The pairing of these composers with specific episodes certainly allowed each challenges which they were able to tackle with great end results.  Apart from their being a host of music, the bottom line is that the sequencing of these discs makes this entire package an amazingly engaging listening experience.  One forgets rather quickly that these scores were for animated television!