superman was way too weak on the show
always getting knocked out, always needed help
what is up with that
it's true; superman is pitifully weak in comparison to his comic incarnation. so i prefer not to compare them and just see superman in the animated series as essentially a separate entity.
before we get started, does anyone want to get out?
Superman's strength & stamina levels have always been wildly inconsistent regardless of what medium he appears in. When he first appeared in the Golden Age he wasn't nearly as strong as he is now; later on in the Silver Age his strength was such that he could juggle planets as if they were golf balls - which caused lots of narrative problems since someone that powerful obviously could not be challenged easily, so ever since then writers have tried to scale back his strength so that it can be easier to make dramatic, thrilling scenarios for him.
In the Max Fleischer cartoons he'd go back & forth between fighting off giant robots & dinosaurs & bird people to nearly being overwhelmed by gas bombs, circus animals and on one occasion nearly defeated by a trap door.
In the Chris Reeve movies he got knocked out by a bus during the big Metropolis fight in the 2nd film, then in the 4th film he was strong enough to physically move the moon out of orbit so as to block the sun.
And those are just a few examples of how wildly uneven his power levels have been from one era to another; if you watch the solo Superman series that came before Justice League you'll see some genuinely absurd power ups & power downs resulting in Superman struggling with a guy in a cheap Iron Man knock off suit and holding back way too much when dealing with the obnoxious Live-Wire.
Me and a friend actually got into a huge argument about this when she said "Bruce Timm ruined Superman for a generation." due to the inconsistent power levels Superman had on his shows. Now Lord knows there was stuff in the DCAU/Timmverse I didn't like & I don't deny that there were some absurd power downs from one episode to the next but saying Timm (and his collaborators) "ruined Superman for a generation" is placing way too much blame on him for what has really been an on-going problem regarding the struggle to keep Superman popular and relevant as more & more heroes (namely Marvel heroes) find their way to pop culture prominence. After all, why should Super-Friends & the Reeve movies get a free pass for the same flaws as Timm's shows (inconsistent power levels) other than they were "made in a different era"?