Way back in 1942 cinema audiences were treated to 10 minute Superman cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios. One of the best of these animated features entitled The Artic Giant in which the Man of Steel fought a prehistoric creature the looked an awful lot like Godzilla.
The titanic Tyrannosaurus is discovered by scientists frozen in Siberia and is transported back to civilization. The creature is being kept frozen by a giant refrigerator unit, which of course short circuits unleashing the monster to step on a bunch of people before Superman can subdue it.
If the writers of the cartoon obviously drew inspiration from King Kong (1933) and The Lost World (1925). In that film a captured Brontosaurus is brought back to London where it escapes and again does a lot of property damage.
I found it uncanny how the scenes of the Tyrannosaurus stomping through Metropolis resembled similar scenes in the movies The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Gojira (Godzilla, 1954).
In regards to The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms I thought that the monster looked a lot like the illustration of the fictional dinosaur from film called the Rhedosaurus which was dreamt up by the legendary creature maker Ray Harryhausen.
The monster also looks a lot like Godzilla, a be it a rather chubby version of him.
I also thought that this fellow must have been inspired by our overweight T-Rex friend.
You are probably wondering how I know about that one? Before you think that I am a pervert, the film's production company wanted me to promote the film due to my work with other monster films. I was sent a lot of (clean) images as promotional material. I passed on doing the promo work, but kept the images because I thought they were a hoot.
Oh, and since we are on the subject Superman also fought King Kong ... kinda.
Well, maybe that was Mighty Joe Young.
History:
They were originally produced by Fleischer Studios, who completed the initial short and eight further cartoons in 1941 and 1942. Production was resumed in May 1942 by Famous Studios, a successor company to Fleischer, who produced eight more cartoons in 1942 and 1943. Superman was the final animated series initiated by Fleischer Studios, before Famous Studios officially took over production.
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