Unleash the Fanboy explores the connections between cartoonist Jack Kirby and his creation Ben "The Thing" Grimm:
GRIMM AND KIRBY grew up on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan, the Jew-iest place ever to exist in America. The Lower East
Side was one of the densest neighborhoods on the planet with around a
quarter million people squished into every square mile. Between 1880 and
1915, over 2 million Jews fled to America from Russia and Eastern
Europe to escape pogroms and anti-Semitism. Most of
those Jews moved to the Lower East Side. Families who lived there were
so poor, they often had to cramp as many as 10 people into one bedroom
tenements (apartments).
Grimm lived at 7135 Yancy Street, probably inspired by the real
Delancey Street. You can take a trip to the Lower East Side and walk the
same streets on which Grimm spent his youth causing trouble. You can
visit Essex St., where Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 25, 1917, and then walk to the Suffolk Street tenements he grew up at.
The piece doesn't mention the 1978 Kirby-illustrated
What-if story, in which members of the Marvel Bullpen are transformed into the Fantastic Four. Kirby, of course, is the Thing, while Stan Lee is Mister Fantastic.
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All he's got are a bunch of photographs: Ringo Starr
plans to share some rare personal snap in a new e-book this summer and one of those ridiculously Genesis limited-edition books later in the year.
An e-book will be
published June 12 in conjunction with the upcoming Grammy Museum
exhibit, “Ringo: Peace & Love,” in Los Angeles, Genesis Publications
and Starr announced Wednesday. Select images from the book, which also
includes unpublished images from his personal archive, will be displayed
at the exhibit.
A limited-edition hand-bound book signed by Starr will be available in December.
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Questions that can arise only in academia: Is "Doctor Who" "
thunderously racist"?
Several of the contributors to the book, Doctor Who and Race, which
is set for publication in July, believe the failure to cast a black or
Asian Doctor demonstrates an integral racism in the series, while others
have pointed to an inappropriately "slapstick" take on Hitler in a 2011
episode, the early use of white actors in ethnic roles (such as in 1977
adventure The Talons of Weng-Chiang), and the portrayal of primitive
cultures as "savages".
One American writer, Amit Gupta, even suggests that
fifth Doctor Peter Davison's obsession with cricket harks back to the
"racial and class nostalgia" of the British Empire.
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