In the comic it's Superman's birthday and Batman and Robin (Jason Todd) and Wonder Woman travel up to the Fortress of Solitude to take him their presents and find him in the clutches of some sort of alien plant that has attached itself to his chest with tentacles running over his body.
Supes is catatonic and unmoving, but the readers discover that in his mind he is living his perfect life on Krypton, where he is married and has a kid and everything is hunky-dory.
Batman, Robin and WonderWoman are confronted by Mongul, one of Superman's crazy powerful alien villans who has sent the plant to ensnare superman. They proceed to the fighting while Supes is in his own little world. Mongul pretty well wipes the floor with the three of them until Batman pulls the plant off of Superman and it attaches itself to him.
Supes wakes up and throws down on Mongul. Severely pissed off Big Blue is. He snaps and is pretty much ready to kill Mongul. And it all comes to a head as he simply says "Burn" and lets loose with the heat-vision.
This is the climax of the story, and is one of the first real times I ever saw a writer really give Superman some balls and have him be really emotional.
I mean, he's Superman, pretty much completely unstoppable, so, really, there's never really any way you can really get to him. Mongul found a way, and Superman really snapped. The only other time I can think of that there is this sort of punch for Supes is in Kingdom Come where the US Government drops nuclear bombs on a giant battle between the superhumans and only a few survive and Superman flies out to the capitol and is pretty much ready to kill everyone there for what they've done.
The point to all this rambling is that on their Justice League Unlimited show, Cartoon Network has adapted this particular story, and it was on tonight.
For the most part it was pretty well done. They dropped Robin from the story and shortened it down a bit, but it was pretty much the same story.
The problem I have is they completely flubbed the climax of the story with the "Burn" line.
In my mind Supes says it with a low growl, that deadly kind of emotion. He's ready to kill.
In the show it's short and punchy "Burn!" Like he's an anime character calling out for a special move, and it just doesn't work. I never really got any of the emotion from the guy doing Superman.
Without that one little bit the whole story just falls apart.
Really dissapointing.
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