Pop culture roundup: Jack Kirby and the Thing; Ringo Starr; Doctor Who

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 Select images from the book, which also includes unpublished images from his personal archive, will be displayed at the exhibit.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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