This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what
you here weekday afternoons on the Drive. She's an Academy Award and Emmy nominated
filmmaker. Leslie I Works has put together a new original Max DC commentary series
called Superpowers The DC Story, and she's here to tell us all about it.
Good morning and welcome Leslie, Good morning, Thank you for having me.
Let's start with the beginning of DC Comics. How did it all start?
So this is a three hour series where this can be debuting on Max
Thursday, July twentieth, And this was a project from Warner Brothers. They
came to me after seeing my series called The Imagineering Story on Disney Plus and
they would they wanted me to tell the story of DC in a similar way.
And I brought in my co director Mark Camelina, who unbeknownst to me
at the time, had told me that he had grown up and collected comics
books and now has about six thousand comics books and his parents attic. I
said, Okay, you're the perfect partner. So we embarked on what was
probably about a year and a half of research and telling the story interviewing a
lot of the artists and producers and directors and executives related to DC through the
years, as the entire story since the origins of DC and through pretty much
today about as of about six months ago or a year ago, and that's
that's kind of the beginning of it. Were you a comic book fan?
You know? I grew up, you know, reading comics. I wasn't
like a collector or anything, and I enjoyed the characters very much. I
just wasn't like a diehard, you know, collector or anything like Mark was.
So but I, you know, I grew up on the other side
of the track. So it's speak. My family is a Disney side.
My grandfather was a co creator and designer of Mickey Mouse. I grew up
in the Disney world and he was the original animator or in uh, you
know, artists for the Disney comic books or the Disney comics that were in
the newspapers. So so that that sort of informed my interest in animation and
cartoons and and things like that. I used to like read the Mad magazines
like crazy, and I grew up as an artist myself, so I've always
appreciated the storytelling in these cartoons and these animated comics, and and then how
they grew over over time. So I grew up watching Wonder Woman and you
know, just the early, the early TV shows that were based on these
characters. So uh, and of course the animated films over the years,
so animated TV shows. So yeah, that's so it was a really fun
project to dive into. In all fairness, I was not, at least
not in the sense of the superheroes. When I was a child, I
found a big box of and I don't know if you remember these. They
were called classic comics. Basically they told ancient stories and they were my uncles.
And my uncle wasn't allowed to read superhero comics by my grandparents, but
they did allow him to collect and read those, so that was my first
exposure to them. I guess the idea was, as long as you're learning
something, we're cool with it. Later, I guess my superhero was James
Bond. I discovered the James Bond novels and maybe seventh grade, and he
kind of became my superhero. But I kept up with what was going on
in comic lore because I needed I wanted to be in touch with what's going
on in pop culture. Uh huh sure among my peers. Well, that
makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean what, I don't know if people realize that these comics were a
reflection of what was going on in the time through time, so you know,
starting way back in thirty seven, all the way through you know today,
DC has really you know, created characters that that reflect what's going on
in our society culturally, racially, politically, economically, et cetera. Meanwhile,
what goes what goes on out there, these characters not only do they
do they reflect that, but they also inspire it. So you'll have these
through lines or or you know, uh, comic book lines that actually are
about something you know, or that are that is going on in the in
the world. And we also get into the story of DC versus Marvel and
how Marvel really came out, you know, in second to DC. But
excuse me, but you know, we're really much more greedy and much more
grounded in realism, and the DC characters are much more fantastical. But then
DC started to kind of change as well, you know, and it's just
an interesting ride through time of creators of artists, of characters, and impact
of what these comic books and these characters had in the public. Superpowered The
DC Story, a three part Max Original DC documentary produced by Academy Award and
Emmy nominated filmmaker Leslie iworks, Who's joining us? What role did World War
Two play in the development of DC comics and the DC characters? Well,
so, you know, that was an important time. I think the comic
books really surged during World War Two when people kids certainly were reading them.
They were reflecting what was going on in the war. There was an artist
named Joe Hubert who was actually anti war war no more, who during kind
of Vietnam actually started to to really you know, focus on anti war themes.
But during the World War Two it was so popular and they became almost
a respite for soldiers in the war reading these comics. And and this was
not only DC but Disney Comics and you know, comics everywhere really started to
really started to proliferate and became an important part. Uh. And it was
sort of the surge of the comic book era. And I've often thought that
people needed something they were feeling kind of hopeless and helpless. Uh, they
needed someone who they needed someone to make them feel like, Okay, it's
it's not all bad, correct, and and and so you had you had
ways to tell stories from the front line, you know, are superheroes and
other other storylines that people could relate to from far away right. And they
really did help the war effort in the four years. I mean, twenty
five million comics per month were sold during this time. I mean that's insane.
And then you had like, you know, the Justice Society of America
came out of that. And then after the war, you had these sort
of postwar blues that hit as TV hit and that's when Superman, you know,
became a kind of a live action character in nineteen fifty two and so
six seasons later, you know, with George Reeves, he became the face
of Superman for a generation. And and that you know, he was very
inspirational. I think after the War of just to be able to watch the
watch this hero that we all sort of needed, you know, during some
dark times. Leslie I Works has produced The Superpowered The DC Story, a
three part Max Original DC commentary documentary that is out this week. If you're
a comic book fan, I think you'll enjoy it. If you weren't a
comic book fan, you'll learn something. And I guess that's the idea,
isn't it, Leslie. It is. It's really met for comic book fans
and non comic book fans, and we're really trying to blur the line there
for those. And it's a it's a narrative telling of this story of creativity,
business and innovation, and who doesn't like any of that? Yeah,
So I think it'll be interesting to a lot of people. Superpowered the DC
story. See it on Max And we thank you for joining us, Leslie,
I Works, thank you, thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven. And Ihearts Media Presentation