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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what

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you here weekday afternoons on the Drive. She's an Academy Award and Emmy nominated

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filmmaker. Leslie I Works has put
together a new original Max DC commentary series

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called Superpowers The DC Story, and
she's here to tell us all about it.

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Good morning and welcome Leslie, Good
morning, Thank you for having me.

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Let's start with the beginning of DC
Comics. How did it all start?

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So this is a three hour series
where this can be debuting on Max

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Thursday, July twentieth, And this
was a project from Warner Brothers. They

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came to me after seeing my series
called The Imagineering Story on Disney Plus and

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they would they wanted me to tell
the story of DC in a similar way.

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And I brought in my co director
Mark Camelina, who unbeknownst to me

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at the time, had told me
that he had grown up and collected comics

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books and now has about six thousand
comics books and his parents attic. I

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said, Okay, you're the perfect
partner. So we embarked on what was

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probably about a year and a half
of research and telling the story interviewing a

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lot of the artists and producers and
directors and executives related to DC through the

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years, as the entire story since
the origins of DC and through pretty much

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today about as of about six months
ago or a year ago, and that's

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that's kind of the beginning of it. Were you a comic book fan?

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You know? I grew up,
you know, reading comics. I wasn't

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like a collector or anything, and
I enjoyed the characters very much. I

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just wasn't like a diehard, you
know, collector or anything like Mark was.

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So but I, you know,
I grew up on the other side

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of the track. So it's speak. My family is a Disney side.

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My grandfather was a co creator and
designer of Mickey Mouse. I grew up

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in the Disney world and he was
the original animator or in uh, you

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know, artists for the Disney comic
books or the Disney comics that were in

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the newspapers. So so that that
sort of informed my interest in animation and

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cartoons and and things like that.
I used to like read the Mad magazines

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like crazy, and I grew up
as an artist myself, so I've always

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appreciated the storytelling in these cartoons and
these animated comics, and and then how

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they grew over over time. So
I grew up watching Wonder Woman and you

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know, just the early, the
early TV shows that were based on these

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characters. So uh, and of
course the animated films over the years,

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so animated TV shows. So yeah, that's so it was a really fun

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project to dive into. In all
fairness, I was not, at least

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not in the sense of the superheroes. When I was a child, I

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found a big box of and I
don't know if you remember these. They

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were called classic comics. Basically they
told ancient stories and they were my uncles.

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And my uncle wasn't allowed to read
superhero comics by my grandparents, but

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they did allow him to collect and
read those, so that was my first

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exposure to them. I guess the
idea was, as long as you're learning

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something, we're cool with it.
Later, I guess my superhero was James

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Bond. I discovered the James Bond
novels and maybe seventh grade, and he

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kind of became my superhero. But
I kept up with what was going on

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in comic lore because I needed I
wanted to be in touch with what's going

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on in pop culture. Uh huh
sure among my peers. Well, that

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makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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I mean what, I don't know
if people realize that these comics were a

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reflection of what was going on in
the time through time, so you know,

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starting way back in thirty seven,
all the way through you know today,

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DC has really you know, created
characters that that reflect what's going on

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in our society culturally, racially,
politically, economically, et cetera. Meanwhile,

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what goes what goes on out there, these characters not only do they

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do they reflect that, but they
also inspire it. So you'll have these

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through lines or or you know,
uh, comic book lines that actually are

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about something you know, or that
are that is going on in the in

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the world. And we also get
into the story of DC versus Marvel and

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how Marvel really came out, you
know, in second to DC. But

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excuse me, but you know,
we're really much more greedy and much more

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grounded in realism, and the DC
characters are much more fantastical. But then

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DC started to kind of change as
well, you know, and it's just

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an interesting ride through time of creators
of artists, of characters, and impact

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of what these comic books and these
characters had in the public. Superpowered The

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DC Story, a three part Max
Original DC documentary produced by Academy Award and

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Emmy nominated filmmaker Leslie iworks, Who's
joining us? What role did World War

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Two play in the development of DC
comics and the DC characters? Well,

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so, you know, that was
an important time. I think the comic

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books really surged during World War Two
when people kids certainly were reading them.

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They were reflecting what was going on
in the war. There was an artist

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named Joe Hubert who was actually anti
war war no more, who during kind

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of Vietnam actually started to to really
you know, focus on anti war themes.

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But during the World War Two it
was so popular and they became almost

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a respite for soldiers in the war
reading these comics. And and this was

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not only DC but Disney Comics and
you know, comics everywhere really started to

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really started to proliferate and became an
important part. Uh. And it was

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sort of the surge of the comic
book era. And I've often thought that

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people needed something they were feeling kind
of hopeless and helpless. Uh, they

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needed someone who they needed someone to
make them feel like, Okay, it's

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it's not all bad, correct,
and and and so you had you had

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ways to tell stories from the front
line, you know, are superheroes and

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other other storylines that people could relate
to from far away right. And they

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really did help the war effort in
the four years. I mean, twenty

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five million comics per month were sold
during this time. I mean that's insane.

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And then you had like, you
know, the Justice Society of America

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came out of that. And then
after the war, you had these sort

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of postwar blues that hit as TV
hit and that's when Superman, you know,

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became a kind of a live action
character in nineteen fifty two and so

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six seasons later, you know,
with George Reeves, he became the face

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of Superman for a generation. And
and that you know, he was very

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inspirational. I think after the War
of just to be able to watch the

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watch this hero that we all sort
of needed, you know, during some

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dark times. Leslie I Works has
produced The Superpowered The DC Story, a

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three part Max Original DC commentary documentary
that is out this week. If you're

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a comic book fan, I think
you'll enjoy it. If you weren't a

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comic book fan, you'll learn something. And I guess that's the idea,

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isn't it, Leslie. It is. It's really met for comic book fans

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and non comic book fans, and
we're really trying to blur the line there

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for those. And it's a it's
a narrative telling of this story of creativity,

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business and innovation, and who doesn't
like any of that? Yeah,

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So I think it'll be interesting to
a lot of people. Superpowered the DC

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story. See it on Max And
we thank you for joining us, Leslie,

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I Works, thank you, thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven. And Ihearts
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