I suppose as far as comics go I would be a ‘Marvel’ guy, though the choice wasn’t mine. My older brother was the one who had the little job that supplied the pocket full of quarters to actually buy the comics and he brought Marvel. Maybe the occasional Teen Titans or Justice League, but he pretty much bought every book that Marvel put out, so I read what he chose to buy, which you can imagine how these things burned themselves in my childish brain since I was just learning how to read at the time. Nonetheless, despite the fact my point of reference of DC themed comics is somewhat lacking, I still look forward to their animated features as much as, if not more than the Marvel ones since the Marvel outings have been somewhat lackluster.

The story starts with that damn Lex Luthor (voiced by James Marsters) and his evil LexCorp doing some excavations in a place and at a depth that they have no business being at when his team of archeologist stumble upon an alien looking sphere. Lex, being the genius that he is, surmises that if something is buried this deep in the earth then it must be there for a damn good reason, but something goes wrong and the sphere cracks open releasing the monstrosity known as Doomsday, who’s only purpose of existence is the elimination of life. Doomsday proceeds to do just that and kills up everything it sees, jumps out of the deep hole and kills up some more stuff and even kills Bambi. Damn.

Meanwhile Kal-El (Adam Baldwin) is still saving the world in his spare time because his primary gig seems to be having sex with Lois Lane (Anne Heche). I mean these two spent an awful lot of time in their bathrobes bathing in the afterglow of love, be it in Lois’ Metropolis apartment, the Fortress of Solitude or wherever they could grab a quickie. Of course I wonder about the safety concerns of one having sexual relations with the Man of Steel, but it’s obvious that Lois and Superman have that all figured out. So you would think that life for Lois is pretty good right? She’s the best reporter on the biggest paper in the city, judging by her crib she’s making pretty decent loot,

she has a four inch waist and her boyfriend is freaking SUPERMAN – who’s knocking it off on the regular. But no, Lois is unhappy because Superman won’t commit, he won’t admit he’s Clark Kent, he won’t introduce her to Martha… waaaah waaaah waaaaah. What in the HELL does it take to please you people!

Anyway, after finishing up with Lois yet again, Supes gets wind of this Doomsday creature just busting stuff up indiscriminately. He off flies to quickly dispatch with him, but he’s got another thing coming as Doomsday is just a strong as he is and has absolutely no conscience. When Superman sees blood for the first time, he knows he’s in trouble and after a very long and brutal battle he realizes that he has only one choice and that’s to sacrifice himself to kill Doomsday.

The world weeps. Lois needs seriously needs to start thinking about taking residence in a convent because not too many cats are trying to follow Superman, if you know what I’m saying. Lex, as per usual, has a plan. It seems Superman isn’t as dead as we thought he was since he shows up the next day saving lives like he always does, but something ain’t quite right as he is taking his job a bit too serious. How about a little due process here Superman? Trust me when I tell you though, whatever is wrong will be set right and somehow someway, our visitor from the red sun will be the one setting it right.

So my comic book insiders inform that this animated series is based on a graphic novel, which they also inform me is much better than this. Since I haven’t read that book, I will have to take their word on it, and since this film is a brief 75 minutes, I’m sure all kinds of stuff was left out for the sake of time. Though I often wonder why all of these animated features are so truncated when it comes to their running time. Since I don’t have the comic building up my expectations it’s safe to say that I enjoyed ‘Superman: Doomsday’ quite a bit. It’s always good to the caped crusader… errr, that’s that other guy isn’t it? It’s always good to see Superman in motion, be it in a live action movies or animated features, and this is a good story that has plenty of action, some fine voice acting and a nice flow.

This is rated PG-13 so there’s a little bit of harsh language, an awful lot of violence and killing and of course Kal-el and Lois carrying on like a couple of sixteen year old newlyweds, a situation you might not feel comfortable explaining to your very young children just yet. The problem I have with this is generally the problem I have with most of this new breed of animated Direct to DVD films is that these movies seem to be in a rush to get to the end of the story. This one less than most, because whether you read comics or not, you have almost no choice but to be somewhat familiar with the mythos of Superman, Lois, Lex, Jimmy and Perry, so the writers could get way with a lot of assumptions. But it still starts out at a reasonable story arc and then BOOM! It’s time for some action so we can get to the end. It’s like they’re operating off of a punch clock.

Still, I will say that in my opinion this is probably the best of these new animated super-hero features I’ve seen thus far and will look forwarding to what’s coming out next from the DC Universe.