8:30pm - 9:30pm Tuesday 13th Dec
BBC Radio 2
"Welcome, citizens, to a world where masked vigilantes protect the streets from villainy and evil; if you don't have two identities you're a no-one, and the only kind of man to place your trust in has to be clad in a skin-tight multi-coloured body stocking (capes are optional). To guide us through the history of the comic book superhero is Alice Cooper, who happily admits to adopting some of the camper elements of the caped crusaders. The range of interviews swoops (like a bat) from Pet Shop Boy and former Marvel comics employee Neil Tennant (he used to anglicise the US spellings in their London office) to master comic creators such as Jerry Siegel (Superman) and Stan Lee (Spider-Man, above, as played most recently by Tobey Maguire). There's music from the films the cartoons spawned and a hilarious clip from the US TV series of Batman, starring Adam West, in which Batman declines the best table in a restaurant - because he doesn't want to draw unnecessary attention to himself. All of which comic capers leaves me with just one thing to say: kapow, sock, bam, whack, splatt! "