Before Christopher Reeve flew through the sky in Richard Donner's classic film, before Dean Cain romanced Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane, and before Henry Cavill donned a computer-generated red cape, George Reeves brought the comic book character of Superman to life in the 1950s TV series, Adventures of Superman. If you really want to appreciate the achievements of modern-day superhero TV shows and movies, do yourself a favor and revisit this classic television series which has origins that reach back before the advent of color TV. It's also an absolute necessity for the Superman completists among you.

Running for six seasons and 104 episodes from 1952 to 1958, Adventures of Superman took the title hero out of the radio recording studio and onto television screens in living rooms across the nation. Known for a grueling filming schedule, a bargain-basement effects budget, and tumultuous personal issues for cast members, Adventures of Superman nonetheless became a surprise hit, thanks in part to the popularity of the Superman comics and the fact that it was eventually filmed and broadcast in color. In concert with "Superman Week" here on Collider, we've put together a selection of some must-watch episodes of the series that you simply need to see; it'll certainly make you appreciate just how far the Man of Steel has come in 60 years.

Honorable Mention: "Superman and the Mole Men"

Our first episode on the must-watch list is actually an honorable mention because it's a two-part TV movie that served as the pilot for Adventures of Superman. Half police procedural and half sci-fi short, "Superman and the Mole Men" has a lot of the familiar elements that fans of the series would come to know and love, but it also has a fairly ambitious approach to storytelling. Rather than having Superman simply swoop in to save the day, this special actually attempted to use the hero to make some social commentary.

"Superman and the Mole Men" took Clark Kent and Lois Lane out into the countryside in order to do a story on a small town's claim to fame: the world's deepest oil well. While this certainly doesn't sound thrilling, things soon take a Twilight Zone type turn. Before long, radioactive mole men from the center of the Earth crawl up through the six-mile deep hole and begin to cause a panic in the local community. What's interesting in this tale is that Superman doesn't simply fight the diminutive mole men, but actually protects them from a violent and unruly mob that springs up. At one point, Superman literally calls the townspeople "Nazi stormtroopers" and then takes their guns away from them after they injure one of the mole men. Superman's only allies in town are Lois, a rebellious doctor who volunteers to operate on the wounded mole man, and the local boss of the oil-drilling operation. The conclusion isn't exactly a feel-good ending, but rather a bittersweet one. "Superman and the Mole Men" is certainly an atypical story for what Adventures of Superman would become in serial form, but it's a great introduction to the era.

5. "All That Glitters"

And now we jump from the series' pilot to its final episode, one directed by Reeves himself. Don't get me wrong, "All That Glitters" is very silly. It's clearly one of the show's color broadcasts, which were so expensive at the time that little money was left for the cast, crew, and special effects. That fact, along with the fatigue and declining morale on set in later seasons, led to some lackluster and lackadaisical episodes. "All That Glitters", at least, was a light, fun story that ended with one of the most surprising and poignant lines of dialogue in the series.

This final episode features Phil Tead in his occasional role of Professor Pepperwinkle, a bumbling scientist whose experiments tend to cause trouble for Superman. This time around, Pepperwinkle appears to have solved the age-old alchemical quest to turn scrap metal into gold. When Jimmy Olsen blabs about the Professor's research, two greedy goons kidnap Pepperwinkle and finance his operation, hoping to get rich on ill-gotten gold. This is all pretty straightforward until Jimmy gets knocked on the head by one of Pepperwinkle's traps meant to subdue the crooks, and in his stupor he hallucinates that he and Lois take some Kryptonite pills that grant them the powers of Superman. What follows is a fun series of events that sees Lois and Jimmy flying, crashing through walls, and taking down the crooks with their new abilities.

Of course this is all in Jimmy's head. It comes down to Superman to save the day in the end. But back in Perry White's office for a debriefing, Jimmy Olsen says to Clark, “Golly, Mr. Kent. You’ll never know how wonderful it is to be like Superman.” To which Clark responds, “No, Jimmy. I guess I never will.” This struck me as so sad and so poignant, not just as a splash of cold water to the faces of the actors who knew they were facing the end to Adventures of Superman, but specifically to Reeves who would reportedly commit suicide by gunshot in 1959.

4. "Superman on Earth"

Let's trip back now to the days of black-and-white television and look at the first broadcast episode of Adventures of Superman. This half hour is a classic telling of Superman's origin story and might actually be my favorite version of the oft-told tale. It's a sweeping sci-fi story that starts out with our narrator taking us through space to the planet Krypton where a council has been gathered to discuss plans to manage the natural disasters afflicting their world. Jor-El, their best scientist, lays out a rather apocalyptic scenario and a far-fetched escape plan, but the other council members literally laugh him out of the meeting. What follows is the well-trod tale of baby Kal-El being placed into the test rocket and sent to Earth as Krypton is destroyed in delightfully low-tech effects fashion.

Adventures of Superman gives us a variation on Superman's adopted parents as Sarah and Eben Kent come across the crashed rocket and raise the baby inside it as their own. The show even takes time to check in on a 12-year-old Clark who's worried about why he's so different from all the other kids. Don't worry though, a 25-year-old Clark soon makes his way to Metropolis--after Pa Kent dies of a heart attack--and soon earns his position on the Daily Planet staff when he shows that he has a connection with the mysterious and recently arrived hero, Superman. There's a cute little back and forth between Clark and Lois in which Clark almost literally winks at the camera; he might as well say, "I'm totally Superman." This episode tells you everything you need to know about the rest of the series to come, so if you enjoyed it, you should definitely check out some more.

3. "The Perils of Superman"

Now we get into some more of the fan-favorite episodes. In the penultimate episode, "The Perils of Superman", a disgruntled crook (wearing a giant lead mask that's locked onto his neck...) takes issue with the staff of the Daily Planet for their hand in ruining his criminal enterprise. Dressed in his clever (or so he thinks) disguise that's impervious to Superman's x-ray vision, the unnamed criminal promises Clark, Lois, Jimmy, and Perry that he has a team of 10 men dressed exactly like him, and that they'll soon come for them to give them their just deserts. With Superman distracted by the various crooks, he'll be unable to save all of the Daily Planet workers ... or so the plan goes.

What unfolds is a zany (if at times lazily acted) plot that finds Perry White strapped to a log at a saw mill, Lois Line tied to railroad tracks on the other side of town, Jimmy Olsen driving down a curvy mountainside road with sabotaged brake and steering lines, and Clark suspended above a vat of boiling acid. The head crook--who certainly has severe lead poisoning at this point--admits to Clark that he's a fan of classic movies and the way they dispose of do-gooders, just before leaving the reporter to be disintegrated. But of course, Superman is unaffected by the vat of boiling acid so he simply crawls out and flies off to rescue his compatriots.

It's a fun sequence in which Superman busts in in the nick of time to save each of them, with enough spare seconds to stop and chat about the other friends of theirs who are in peril. Luckily, Jimmy has the presence of mind to dive out of his car before it goes over the cliff since Superman doesn't quite make it in time to prevent that. What's interesting here, other than the ridiculousness of the scheme, is that Superman IDs the ringleader of the gang based on the fact that his x-ray vision reveals the key in his pocket that unlocks all the masks. Hilarious. (This is also one of three episodes directed by Reeves. The third is "The Brainy Burro.")

2. "Panic in the Sky"

Widely considered the favorite episodes by fans, "Panic in the Sky" is perhaps the most classic Superman plot ever told. Though most of the stories in Adventures of Superman feature the title hero taking on very human criminals in situations that are just a bit too hairy for the police to handle, this Season 2 episode actually pits Superman against a threat that only he can take on. A meteor threatens to smash into the Earth and its point of impact just so happens to be Metropolis. It's a very possible problem that we still lack a practical solution for even today, unless we've got a Deep Impact/Armageddon thing going on.

You'd think that Superman could handle a simple asteroid bound for Earth, right? Well, as the snarky scientist at the observatory points out, the space rock could be full of foreign chemicals that could very well affect Superman in unexpected ways. And that's exactly what happens. Though Superman stops the meteor from falling onto Metropolis--it now orbits the Earth like a second moon--the resulting collision knocks him back to Earth and gives him amnesia. The Daily Planet staff tries to jog his memory, even as Clark nearly reveals his identity as Superman by undressing in front of Jimmy, but it's to no avail. It's not until the meteor starts to fall back to Earth that the threat of world destruction forces Clark to take action, even though he doesn't know that he's actually Superman. He takes a literal leap of faith out of his apartment window and finds, to his relief, that he can still fly.

This episodes takes a crazy turn as Superman doesn't just smash up the asteroid, he actually lands on it and uses an explosive device cobbled together by the elderly scientist to blow it up. Except he gets himself caught in the explosion in the process; no matter, though, because he's Superman. I love that, even up until the end, Clark wasn't quite sure that he'd be able to survive the blast but went ahead with the plan anyway because it was the necessary thing to do. It's a fantastic episode that gives Superman some rarely seen moments of vulnerability that put the planet in actual peril, even if we knew that everything was going to be fine all along.

1. "The Face and the Voice"

Your mileage certainly may vary when it comes to your favorite episode of Adventures of Superman, but for my money, "The Face and the Voice" was the most unique, original, and entertaining episode of the series. For one thing, it gave Reeves the opportunity to add a third face to his character. He'd been playing the mild-mannered Clark Kent and the heroic Superman for quite a few episodes at this point, but this installment allowed him to play the hilarious small-time crook known as Boulder.

The premise of "The Face and the Voice" is that a clever criminal hires the henchman Boulder (Reeves) and pays him to undergo plastic surgery and voice training to take on the appearance of Superman. It's a crazy plan, made crazier by the fact that another henchman by the name of Scratchy sneaks into Perry White's office to steal a prized record of "A Speech by Superman" from the editor's personal files. What really sells the silliness in this episode is Reeves' surprising range and convincing portrayal of Boulder, a stereotypical thick-headed gangster who struggles with his transformation into Superman. The plot then thickens as the fake Superman begins robbing local shops and jewelry stores, but then inexplicably donates the ill-gotten gains to charity.

The plan takes a weird turn when it's revealed that the mastermind intended to confuse the real Superman into making him think he was losing his mind. Then, in the meantime, the fake Superman would convince the politicians and the police that they couldn't do anything to stop him, so they should just stay out of his way, for instance, when he goes to rob a gold delivery. Surprisingly, the plan seems to work since Clark goes to his doctor friend for a psychological examination and isn't convinced when he gets a clean bill of health. It's not until the real Superman tracks the crooks down--and saves a kidnapped Jimmy Olsen in the process--that he's 100% sure he wasn't sleepwalking. It's such a silly episode, but Reeves shines in a role that lets him flex his humorous abilities. After all, Adventures of Superman is a show about an alien humanoid who flies around in his underwear to rescue folks from lead-headed gangsters, meteors, and mole men; it's okay to have a little fun with it.

Do you have a favorite episode? Let us know in the comments below! And you can check out every episode of Adventures of Superman on Amazon now!

Catch up on the rest of our Superman Week coverage below:

• 5 Superman Movies That Never Happened: From 'Superman Lives' to 'Batman vs. Superman'
• Why Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor (Might Be) the Villain We Deserve
• 'Superman' Movies Ranked from Worst to Best