Joe Shuster changed the landscape for superheroes. The bold lines and primary colors of Superman, a character he created with writer Jerry Segal, put other action figures in the shade. However unsuccessful legal action lodged in 1946 against National Allied Publications (a forerunner of DC Comics), who claimed ownership of the character, meant that Shuster and Segal missed out on the millions their character would ultimately generate. Worse still, to add insult to injury, following the court case, the duo were stripped of their byline by the publisher.
Shuster and Segal were never able to repeat the success they achieved with their Kryptonite-shy guy. In the era immediately following the war, America no longer felt the need for supermen, and their 1947 follow up, Funnyman, fell flat. By the early 1950s Shuster was reduced to drawing cartoons for cash.
Fast-forward to the mid-2000s, when a comics historian named Craig Yoe discovers a copy of the little-known underground fetish rag, Nights of Horror, in a dusty cardboard box on a book stall. Yoe thought the whip-wielding women depicted in the illustrations bore a remarkable resemblance to the nubile lines of the otherwise chaste Lois Lane. Further research proved Yoe's initial suspicions were likely correct, and with the weight of world renowned art publishers Abrams behind him, he set about compiling a comprehensive compendium of the illicit fetish art of Joe Shuster that had lain undercover for over half a century.
We caught up with Yoe on the eve of the West Coast launch of his book, Secret Identity, which will see several of Shuster's sexy panels brought to life with the help of SuicdeGirls.
Nicole Powers: How did you come across the fetish art of Joe Shuster?
Craig Yoe: I'm always digging into comics history and searching for rare ephemera and forgotten gems of comics. I was at an antique book sale and a book dealer on the back corner of his book stall, he has this dusty old cardboard box. I peered in and it looked like some kind of homemade porn booklets that looked quite interesting. I opened up the first one I saw, and low and behold, I said to myself, "Oh my god! Joe Shuster." I recognized his work. I recognized the creator of Superman's style and realized that it was him doing these illustrations of bondage scenes and it just blew my little mind.
After that I sold the idea of doing a book on this artwork to Abrams, the world's largest art publisher. They do coffee table books on Picasso and Michael Angelo and stuff like that, but on the basis of Joe Shuster having done this erotic artwork I thought it would make a terrific book and they agreed.
Then I started researching the details behind it and it opened up another whole world of neo-Nazi juvenile delinquents and murders and floggings in the park and supreme court cases and the mob and Hitler and showgirls and this whole crazy world that this turned out to be part of.
NP: Where and when did you first discover these comic books?
CY: In New York City about two years ago.
NP: And you just recognized the style? Because Joe Shuster hadn't put his name to this work. He was doing this just to make a buck.
CY: Well I'm a comics historian; I instantly recognized his style. And I conferred with a lot of my fellow comics historians and they all agreed it was Joe's work. Because artwork is like a fingerprint. You can see the DNA in it.
He didn't sign this because this was highly illegal at the time. These booklets, they only printed a thousand copies, were sold under-the-counter in Times Square bookstores in 1953 before the mayor of New York cracked down on the booklets and assigned eighty detectives to find out who was behind them. They confiscated all the copies in the bookstores and arrested the printer. The publisher eventually went to jail for three years for publishing material like this.
NP: I understand you eventually tracked down someone connected with the publisher who was able to confirm that Joe had worked on these comic books.
CY: Yes. There's a professor of erotic literature at San Francisco State [University] who also deals in material of this sort, and he met the guy who wrote these booklets when he bought his erotica collection. He told him that he got his neighbor Joe Shuster to draw these pictures. When the police started cracking down [on Joe's] neighbors they took their unpublished manuscripts and artwork and threw them in the Long island Sound and went undercover....Very few of these booklets survived. They're really rare. To track them down I had to go to rare erotic dealers in Paris and London, and pay some dear money to get these.
NP: You're doing a very interesting live event at Meltdown Comics in LA tonight to promote this where you're recreating some of Joe's erotic panels with live models. I understand you did something similar in New York too. Can you tell us a bit about that?
CY: Yes...In New York we did a giant launch party for the book where all kinds of comics fans and young New York partygoers and members of the BDSM scene all kind of gathered together in one big hoopla to celebrate the launch of the book. We had actors and models acting out scenes from the book, four or five different tableaus around the night club, and it was a big, big hit. Meltdown Comics in LA, which is the premiere comic store out here, heard about the party and wanted to do their version of it our here. That's going to be tonight and I'll be there to sign books and the SuicideGirls are part of the acting out of the scenes. They're going to be there with their whips and lingerie.
NP: What do you hope to achieve with this book? I mean, at the time Joe wasn't allowed to be proud of this work but it's definitely worthy of note.
CY: Well as a historian I like to fill in puzzle pieces of comics history. There's many things I hope for the book, but one of the things I hope is that it brings more attention to Joe Shuster's artwork. He was really a master draftsman and [had] a lot of imagination. He's only thought of as a children's comic book artist doing Superman and here's mature work, in content and also in that he was at the top of his game when he was drawing this. Because the strips he did of Superman he only did when he was a teenager. Now we have him at his full chops doing great work. I hope it celebrates more the artwork of Joe Shuster and people find it a fascinating piece of comic history.
Want to see Sash, Moxi, Adria and Zoli bring Joe Shuster's art to life? Come down to the West Coast Launch Party at Meltdown Comics (7522 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046) tonight, July 29th. The event starts at 8 PM. Secret Identity author Craig Yoe will also be there to sign copies of the book. Click HERE for event info.
For more info on Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, go to Secret-Identity.net.
Shuster and Segal were never able to repeat the success they achieved with their Kryptonite-shy guy. In the era immediately following the war, America no longer felt the need for supermen, and their 1947 follow up, Funnyman, fell flat. By the early 1950s Shuster was reduced to drawing cartoons for cash.
Fast-forward to the mid-2000s, when a comics historian named Craig Yoe discovers a copy of the little-known underground fetish rag, Nights of Horror, in a dusty cardboard box on a book stall. Yoe thought the whip-wielding women depicted in the illustrations bore a remarkable resemblance to the nubile lines of the otherwise chaste Lois Lane. Further research proved Yoe's initial suspicions were likely correct, and with the weight of world renowned art publishers Abrams behind him, he set about compiling a comprehensive compendium of the illicit fetish art of Joe Shuster that had lain undercover for over half a century.
We caught up with Yoe on the eve of the West Coast launch of his book, Secret Identity, which will see several of Shuster's sexy panels brought to life with the help of SuicdeGirls.
Nicole Powers: How did you come across the fetish art of Joe Shuster?
Craig Yoe: I'm always digging into comics history and searching for rare ephemera and forgotten gems of comics. I was at an antique book sale and a book dealer on the back corner of his book stall, he has this dusty old cardboard box. I peered in and it looked like some kind of homemade porn booklets that looked quite interesting. I opened up the first one I saw, and low and behold, I said to myself, "Oh my god! Joe Shuster." I recognized his work. I recognized the creator of Superman's style and realized that it was him doing these illustrations of bondage scenes and it just blew my little mind.
After that I sold the idea of doing a book on this artwork to Abrams, the world's largest art publisher. They do coffee table books on Picasso and Michael Angelo and stuff like that, but on the basis of Joe Shuster having done this erotic artwork I thought it would make a terrific book and they agreed.
Then I started researching the details behind it and it opened up another whole world of neo-Nazi juvenile delinquents and murders and floggings in the park and supreme court cases and the mob and Hitler and showgirls and this whole crazy world that this turned out to be part of.
NP: Where and when did you first discover these comic books?
CY: In New York City about two years ago.
NP: And you just recognized the style? Because Joe Shuster hadn't put his name to this work. He was doing this just to make a buck.
CY: Well I'm a comics historian; I instantly recognized his style. And I conferred with a lot of my fellow comics historians and they all agreed it was Joe's work. Because artwork is like a fingerprint. You can see the DNA in it.
He didn't sign this because this was highly illegal at the time. These booklets, they only printed a thousand copies, were sold under-the-counter in Times Square bookstores in 1953 before the mayor of New York cracked down on the booklets and assigned eighty detectives to find out who was behind them. They confiscated all the copies in the bookstores and arrested the printer. The publisher eventually went to jail for three years for publishing material like this.
NP: I understand you eventually tracked down someone connected with the publisher who was able to confirm that Joe had worked on these comic books.
CY: Yes. There's a professor of erotic literature at San Francisco State [University] who also deals in material of this sort, and he met the guy who wrote these booklets when he bought his erotica collection. He told him that he got his neighbor Joe Shuster to draw these pictures. When the police started cracking down [on Joe's] neighbors they took their unpublished manuscripts and artwork and threw them in the Long island Sound and went undercover....Very few of these booklets survived. They're really rare. To track them down I had to go to rare erotic dealers in Paris and London, and pay some dear money to get these.
NP: You're doing a very interesting live event at Meltdown Comics in LA tonight to promote this where you're recreating some of Joe's erotic panels with live models. I understand you did something similar in New York too. Can you tell us a bit about that?
CY: Yes...In New York we did a giant launch party for the book where all kinds of comics fans and young New York partygoers and members of the BDSM scene all kind of gathered together in one big hoopla to celebrate the launch of the book. We had actors and models acting out scenes from the book, four or five different tableaus around the night club, and it was a big, big hit. Meltdown Comics in LA, which is the premiere comic store out here, heard about the party and wanted to do their version of it our here. That's going to be tonight and I'll be there to sign books and the SuicideGirls are part of the acting out of the scenes. They're going to be there with their whips and lingerie.
NP: What do you hope to achieve with this book? I mean, at the time Joe wasn't allowed to be proud of this work but it's definitely worthy of note.
CY: Well as a historian I like to fill in puzzle pieces of comics history. There's many things I hope for the book, but one of the things I hope is that it brings more attention to Joe Shuster's artwork. He was really a master draftsman and [had] a lot of imagination. He's only thought of as a children's comic book artist doing Superman and here's mature work, in content and also in that he was at the top of his game when he was drawing this. Because the strips he did of Superman he only did when he was a teenager. Now we have him at his full chops doing great work. I hope it celebrates more the artwork of Joe Shuster and people find it a fascinating piece of comic history.
Want to see Sash, Moxi, Adria and Zoli bring Joe Shuster's art to life? Come down to the West Coast Launch Party at Meltdown Comics (7522 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046) tonight, July 29th. The event starts at 8 PM. Secret Identity author Craig Yoe will also be there to sign copies of the book. Click HERE for event info.
For more info on Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, go to Secret-Identity.net.
nicole_powers:
Joe Shuster changed the landscape for superheroes. The bold lines and primary colors of Superman, a character he created with writer Jerry Segal, put other action figures in the shade. However unsuccessful legal action lodged in 1946 against National Allied Publications (a forerunner of DC Comics), who...
diamondjoe:
Didn't the creator of Batman get screwed the same way? 