One of the most notorious moments in fan film history came in the late 1990s, when Marc Kimball, a visual effects editor for TV commercials, dug out a Superman home movie he made in the early Eighties as a college student, and souped it up with 147 (then) modern-day effects on his home computer. Releasing it on the web as Superman: The Super 8 Movie–Special Edition, it was an instant hit, often downloaded 3,500 times a day (and this is before YouTube—those kinds of numbers were unheard of back then). But the viral video smash proved so popular that DC Comics shut it down.
These days, of course, the comic book company has a much more open mind to fan productions, as it showed when I got DC Comics’ definitive stance on fan flicks from its president, Paul Levitz. Back in the day, though, a Cease & Desist letter from DC was enough to knock the Superman fan film offline for good. Kimball went on to make some Star Wars fan flicks and is now hard at work on his own original Sci-Fi film. No one knows if the amateur Man of Steel film will ever resurface, but for now, here’s long lost stills from Superman: The Super 8 Movie–Special Edition.
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