Pop culture roundup: Stan Lee; Frederic Wertham; Jerry Beck; Golden Age DC; Bowie; Wonder Women documentary

Via Marvel Comics: The Untold Story: Here's Stan Lee on a 1971 episode of TV game show "To Tell the Truth."


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Anti-comics crusader pychologist Frederic Wertham  distorted his research in the notorious study "Seduction of the Innocent," claims a librarian who has studied his original notes.

Wertham’s personal archives, however, show that the doctor revised children’s ages, distorted their quotes, omitted other causal factors and in general “played fast and loose with the data he gathered on comics,” according to an article by Carol Tilley, published in a recent issue of Information and Culture: A Journal of History.

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Animation fans will want to check out the recently resurrected Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research site here.

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The first volume of Taschen's five-book series tracing the history of DC Comics is out now. These are individual, expended volumes taken from Taschen's enormous single-volume 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Myth-Making published last year.

The Hollywood Reporter features an article about the new series, plus this neat pic of how the whole series will look on your bookshelf once completely published.

 



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BBC-TV will air a full-length documentary about David Bowie this May.

The film will look at Bowie in 1971, on the road to Hunky Dory, then skips to 1975 – the crucible year of Bowie’s alienated Thin White Duke persona. 1977 sees Bowie in Berlin, with Eno, Iggy et al; then 1980 chronicles the making of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) and Bowie’s entente with the New Romantics. The last of the Five Years is 1983 – coinciding with the megastar breakthrough of Let’s Dance – and an epilogue catches up with his surprise return, 30 years later, with forthcoming LP The Next Day.

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Here's a a preview of "Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, a documentary airing on PBS' Independent Lens April 15.

The film traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, Wonder Women looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation. The film goes behind the scenes with TV stars Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman), comic writers and artists, and real-life superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna and others, who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.