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Every year there are new essays about unveiling the truth behind Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast that aired on CBS radio on October 30th, 1938. We know the truth – the stories about mass hysteria were overblown. For anyone looking for a straightforward history of what happened, look no farther than A. Brad Schwartz. The reason corrective stories keep coming up is that some people prefer to believe that the radio play sparked a nationwide mass panic. It sure makes for a great story. But while there were many confused listeners, some scared by the play’s deceptive production methods, there was not mass panic coast to coast. Finding the truth takes work, not unlike any fact-finding mission today, because we need to sift through a lot of salacious attention seeking information to find the facts. Then, as now, media literacy is...

Batman is arguably the most popular super hero in the world, but we wouldn’t have the Dark Knight today if not for the hero who inspired him…The Shadow! In fact, the very first Batman story ever written is a direct copy of an earlier Shadow story called “Partners of Peril”. On the 80th anniversary of the Shadow’s radio show, Cinelinx takes a look at the character who inspired the creation of Batman.

When you think of a grim, intimidating, darkly-clad super-hero fighting crime in a violence-ridden city during the night, but changing into a wealthy, frivolous and handsome guy during the day, you probably think of the Batman. However, this formula was first used for an earlier hero. When Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger first developed their "Bat-Man" character, they patterned the hero after the best-selling pulp mystery man The Shadow. For their debut Batman tale,...