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Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster
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$7.75*
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| Part No: | 0810996340 |
| Manufacturer: | Abrams ComicArts |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster showcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics, Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after suing his publisher, DC Comics, over the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called "Nights of Horror," published under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Senate. Juvenile deliquency, Dr. Fredric Wertham, and the Brooklyn Thrill Killers gang all figure into this sensational story.
The discovery of this artwork reveals the "secret identity" of this revered comics creator, and is sure to generate controversy and change the perception of the way we look at Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Jimmy Olsen forever. The book includes reproductions of these images, and an essay that provides a detailed account of the scandal and the murder trial that resulted from the publication of this racy material.
"Jeepers, Mr. Kent!"--USA Today "Eye-opening…a compelling feat of literary sleuthing."--Publishers Weekly
"A shocking expose"--National Enquirer
"Startling. . . this fascinating collection adds a new dimension to a hidden history.”
--Miami Herald
Secret Identity is an incredible find of historic significance to comics art….—Library Journal
| Alter egos and HOW!! | 2010-05-31 | 5 / 5 |
| Joe Shuster is a legend in the history of comic art. Along with his partner Jerry Siegel, an iconic figure was brought into our popular culture. Just as their brainchild Superman had a secret identity, apparently so did Shuster. A find of this kind is just too bizzare to contemplate. Especially in the light of the scandal it spawned. All the while, Shuster himself was never implicated or even recognized as the artist who brought forth the lurid images that may have aroused the prurient interests of a gang of youths bent on mayhem.
All proof that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Not even the "Daily Planet" ever had a scoop like this one! |
| Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster | 2010-01-11 | 4 / 5 |
| Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created the comic book character Superman and sold the rights to National (later named DC Comics) for the not-so-super sum of [...] in 1936. Superman was an instant hit, making National millions of dollars. Siegel and Shuster didn't see much of that, simply paid page rates by National for their ongoing stories, until National cut them in for part of the syndication fees paid when a newspaper strip started running. Eventually, both men decided to sue for the rights to the character, and when they lost their suit, both were blacklisted from working in the comic industry. In the mid-1950's, Shuster began drawing illustrations for several pulp magazines, owned and distributed by the Mob. These magazines, most notably //Nights of Horror//, were stories of S&M, drug use, torture, and kinky sex (for that time). And Shuster's illustrations often closely resembled his most famous characters--Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Did he do it as revenge against his treatment by DC Comics or out of his own feelings about the characters he no longer drew? No one will know, but //Secret Identity// will provide you an excellent history of Joe and Jerry's creation of Superman, their rise and fall, and more than 100 pages of the art Shuster did for //Nights of Horror// and a couple of sequel magazines. While not drastically pornographic, //Secret Identity// definitely isn't for children, and prudish Superman fans might find themselves offended.
Reviewed by Ross Rojek |
| Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Sexual Fantasy | 2010-01-01 | 5 / 5 |
| First off, thanks to my best buddy Pat for finding another out of the ordinary gem for me, something I never knew existed, I'd never buy for myself, but enjoyed thoroughly. I've never been a comics nerd, but this one is a keeper.
Everyone has a secret life, from Tiger Woods (now not so secret) to your teachers, pastor, and parents. Everyone has secret longings, desires, wishes or thrills, something dark or strange, something for whatever reason they choose to keep hidden. This is normal, and those who say it isn't are the ones causing so many problems.
So I'm happy to learn that the man who created the first, most powerful and yet most white-bread, clean-cut, and arguably most boring superhero of them all--Superman, whom Yoe calls "the twentieth century archetype of mankind at its finest"--had his own secret life, which managed to find its way out as his own life wore on, and as economic stresses necessitated. Myopic little good Jewish boy Joe Shuster, the man who brought Superman to life with his art (and Jerry Siegel with the stories), got off on BDSM. Fine. Good for him.
The one-page Stan Lee intro carries big comics mojo, but Stan makes it clear that this is not his cup of tea, calling the book "somewhat startling" and Shuster's artwork "sordid." Lee says that while Superman was all things good, this artwork does nothing but "cater to the basest of man's character and morals." Yeah, so what? What's wrong with that?
Lee's intro sets the stage for the argument, repeated by some in Yoe's biography, that poor Joe Shuster, screwed out of his rightful financial due as DC Comics squeezed him and Siegel out of the Superman empire, was "forced" to draw "S&M erotic horror," and how "desperate Joe must have been to have participated in such a project." Yoe's own 35-page narrative, very well researched, easy to read and very entertainingly illustrated with photos, comics and other graphics, also softballs Shuster's participation in the drawings, intimating but not clearly stating that he was compelled to drop to such a pathetic moral nadir by the cunning artifices of corporate backstabbing.
Well, I don't buy it. The 40s and 50s were a time of rampant economic growth, prosperity and opportunity. If you wanted work, there was plenty to be had. But if you limited yourself only to comics, if you'd been pushed out by one of the biggest comics conglomerates in the world, and if you had more or less exhausted your legitimate artistic outlets with largely non-imaginative and derivative strips and characters (the Funnyman superhero), then your other influences and desires, those dark and naughty ones, might well emerge, as I think it's clear they have with Shuster's work.
Now, Yoe's subtitle states flat-out that the artwork is Shuster's. Yet, at no time in this book is this assertion undeniably established. There is no admission from Shuster that the raunchy artwork is his, no documents show a contract to do the work, there are no payment receipts, no eyewitnesses having seen him working on it. There is a great deal of highly convincing circumstancial evidence, from comics specialists and 1950s contemporarites, but Yoe lacks that one undeniable piece of conclusive evidence. To my mind, this is the perfect spider-web-thin lifeline that the diehard, clean-cut Superman fans can latch onto to say that the man who brought us Superman could never have come up with images of such raw sexual depravity and psycho-sexual cruelty. If that works for them, so be it.
But that's not all. After some crimes and murders in the early 50s, the books in which the provocative artwork appeared came to the attention of the national press and Congress. That news-grubbing, self-promoting prig Kefauver got into it, with genuine national censorship legislation the glorious result. Eventually it came to light that the pulp books publishers and distributors were tied to the Mob. Somehow, through all of this, Shuster's major role was not discovered, or revealed; I can't help but think that Shuster's role may have come to light and Superman--as his creation--literally saved him.
As for the images, they aren't really that heavy-duty. Pick up any issue of Heavy Metal, and you've got far more graphic violence and raw sexual content in the first ten pages than this book packs in its 9"x9" and 159 pages (let alone the kind of stuff offered if you happen upon a catalog from SQP). You get black-and-white drawings with a lot of frilly lingerie, stockings and high heels, and some topless nudity, although no frontal. There is no sexual contact, with kissing as intense as it gets. The whip is a very frequent object, but there's also a lot of bondage (mostly female) and spanking, with some femdom, foot worship, a little casual lesbian contact, and illicit pharmaceuticals, and more. If you get a charge out of seeing characters who look exactly like Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor in these situations, as both dom and sub, this book will turn your gears.
But let's remember one thing: As Yoe points out, and as it's plain to see, any 1930s/40s comic had an abundance of gorgeous, voluptuous women, tied up, in positions of domination and peril, often times with clothing torn, missing, ready to fall, in highly charged pseudo-sexual situations. Yeah, it's not much of a leap from this tissue-thin veneer of comics plot to the real fetish thing, offered directly and without pretense or euphemism.
Bottom line: If an unblemished and unquestionably pure reputation for Superman and his creators is paramount to you, don't touch this book. While its assertions are not proven absolutely, the preponderance of evidence shows that Joe Shuster was indeed a kinky little monkey. If you are an open-minded connoisseur of comics and appreciate the full backstory, this is an interesting read, and a very well presented tribute to a man and his art.
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| Very Interesting | 2009-12-30 | 5 / 5 |
| | What an interesting story! Who would have thought Superman and Lowis Lane had a dark side? All of Craig Yoe's books are thoroughly entertaining and creative! What a gem! |
| A real find! | 2009-10-16 | 5 / 5 |
| | While walking down a street of a busy shopping area, my friend decided to enter a bookstore looking to purchase a certain bestseller. While I waited I perused around and accidentally found this book. I quickly grabbed it and scanned it and bought it on the spot. I'm glad my friend wanted to enter that store or else I wouldn't have found this book. "Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster" is a real find. Though spread a bit too thinly in its 150 pages (it could have easily been 100 pages instead) these reproductions of Shuster's fetish drawings are mesmerizing on so many levels. They seem to fill in a missing link about so many things: about the Superman phenomena; the whole comic book world; the crazy world of pulpy fiction; the morality of the era; the artist's intent; artists being able to dabble into their perversities, etc. Though some of the drawings might seem silly or crude today they, imo, perfectly encapsulate the intent of their existence: to elicit some fascination or erotic desire in the viewer. Surprisingly, the often perfectly drawn characters populating this tormented world are a good mix of female and male. The devil on page 98 is cool! That alone makes this collection of kinky drawings worth buying, even if the book itself is flawed. Many drawings are printed across two pages, unable to view the drawings correctly, without the annoying fold separating the art in two. Because a lot of the simple drawing fill up a single page, the book is longer than necessary and gives it a padded feel. And though the intro is interesting enough, I would have been happy with just the drawings themselves. The information about the Thrill Killers gang should have been a footnote, not several pages long. But these are minor quibbles. If you like pulp fiction art from the past this book is a must! |
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