In looking for screenshots for one of those posts I promise I'm going to write but never do, screenshots of the old Fleischer Superman cartoons, I discovered that those very cartoons are now in the public domain. You can download and watch the Fleischer Superman shorts without fear that Paramount, DC Comics or the MPAA will sue you.

I guess that also means I could also download those video and make my own screenshots, or buy DVDs of them and cap those to illustrate the phantom post.

Honestly, it amazes me that their Superman is better looking than all of the animated versions of Superman from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I have thoughs about why.

Elsewhere: What's with that "S"?

With the recent change to LJ where all users get subdomains (like all other weblog hosting services), there's a chance -- however slight -- that Technorati will be less braindead in indexing this page... (as also Google Blog Search).

But before that happens, here's the funny trick... the value of this journal is dependent on what page you are looking at.





The second price is obviously the more accurate one.
(The change in LJ seems to be the result of a group successfully using a Javascript trick to hijack numerous accounts.)

Here's something really cool. Joel Thingvall is an avid art collector. Over the years, he's collected tons of sketches, drawings and paintings of one Wonder Woman. From that collection, he's posted an extensive gallery of those images at the collector and enthusiast site Comic Art Fans. Sometime this week, he posted this remarkable find: the first sketches of our then unnamed Wonder Woman. This was apparantly found by Heritage Auctioneers at the estate of Roth (better known as H.G. Peter, first illustrator of Wonder Woman by William Marston's recommendation). It was sold at auction for over $33,000 in 2002. It's an interesting piece of history, and I only wish the scan posted was better. JPEG artifacting takes a lot of details out of it.

Anyway, there are a number of interesting articles about the origin of Wonder Woman and the curious man behind the Woman. Here's two that I have open on my web browser at the moment. (Largely because there's damn precious little infomation on H.G. Peter on the internet.)

Pryor, Monique. "The Man Behind Wonder Woman: William Marston" Jim Hill Media
Tipton, Scott. "Enter Diana". Movie Poop Shoot