Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster [Hardcover]

Craig Yoe (Author), Joe Shuster (Illustrator), Stan Lee (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Craig Yoe runs the New York design firm YOE! Studio with Clizia Gussoni, and is the author of over 30 books, including The Art of Mickey Mouse. Yoe has won the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, two Addys, the Mobius, and an Eisner Award. Stan Lee is a writer, editor, and comic book creator, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Abrams ComicArts; First Printing edition (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810996340
• ISBN-13: 978-0810996342
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #480,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vice magazine calls Craig Yoe the "Indiana Jones of comics historians." Publishers Weekly says he's the "archivist of the ridiculous and sublime" and calls his work "brilliant." The Onion calls him "the celebrated designer." The Library Journal, "a comics guru." BoingBoing hails him "a fine cartoonist and a comic book historian of the first water." Yoe was Creative Director/Vice President/General Manager of Jim Henson's Muppets, and a Creative Director at Nickelodeon and Disney. Craig has won an Eisner Award and the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the missing piece of the puzzle!, March 11, 2009

By 

David Burd (East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster (Hardcover)

Anyone even remotely interested in comics has heard the story of Superman's creation many times over. Two imaginative kids from Cleveland concoct this fantastic tale of super-heroics and an industry is born. Likewise, we've all heard the story of how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster lost control of their character in a bitter lawsuit with DC Comics in the late 1940's. The same is true of the last chapter: With a big-budget Superman movie in the works, pressure is put upon DC by the community of comic artists. Siegel and Shuster are given a pension by DC and their credits are restored to the comic pages. But the Christopher Reeve Superman movie was released in 1978 and the DC lawsuit took place in 1948. That's a gap of nearly three decades in which Shuster is unaccounted for! An anecdote about Joe working as a messenger is the only story we've heard that explains what Shuster did in those missing years.

Now, with this book, Craig Yoe fills in the missing chapter in the Joe Shuster story. With an introduction by no less than Stan Lee, it is by turns sad, sordid, strange, shocking and super-man-datory reading. Without giving any of it away (I want you to be as fascinated as I was) the story of Joe's lost years involves obscenity, torture, murder and a cast of characters as odd and as varied as the ones he drew in the comic books. Fredric Wertham makes an appearance, along with various gangsters and pornographers, the US Supreme Court, and even Hitler!

No less startling is the art that Shuster produced during this period. It's a tossup as to which is more disturbing, Joe's fetish art or the true story behind it. Subject matter aside, Shuster did some of the best work of his career in this gap between Superman, the comic book and Superman, the movie. Yet it's almost impossible to appreciate the drawing without an uneasy feeling about the bizarre scenes he depicts and the sleazy underworld for which it was created.

Although on the surface this is an art book (the first title released by the new Abrahms ComicArts imprint) it is as much an exposé and a serious work of history. Yoe and his investigators did an amazing job of researching the scandalous facts surrounding these undiscovered drawings and putting them in the proper context.

Joe Shuster's secret identity is revealed at last.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superman's co-creator was a closet kink monster, March 11, 2009

By 

Mike Rogers "MR" (valley stream, ny United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster (Hardcover)

Craig Yoe. Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Creator Joe Shuster. Abrams ComicArts. Apr. 2009. 160p. illus. ISBN 978-0-8109-9634-2. $24.95. ART
Who would have imagined that the artist who invented Superman was a closet kink monster! Digging through a junk box in a used booksellers stall, author Yoe stumbled across extremely rare copies of Nights of Horror, an under-the-counter sex rag banned by the Supreme Court for inspiring the 1954 murder spree by neo-Nazi gang, the Brooklyn Thrill Killers. Disbelieving his eyes, Yoe showed the work to other comics gurus who confirmed that Supes creator Joe Schuster undeniably was the unnamed artist depicting images of torture, rape, bondage, and S&M. How he fell to this level is an even seedier story, which, unfortunately, is all too common. Artist Shuster and writer/partner Jerry Siegel were so desperate to break into the comics industry that they sold the rights to Superman--to Superman!--for the grand sum of $130. Carping about royalties, the duo were replaced by other artists/writers and left destitute. Yoe theorizes that along with making much-needed money, Shuster, who also was going blind, purposely drew the lusty Nights characters to resemble Clark Kent and a super-endowed Lois Lane as an act of vengeance. Shuster indeed almost succeeded, as the thrill kills fueled the government's anti-comics campaign that almost scuttled the industry in the late 1950s. Regardless of the subject matter, Yoe and others feel this is among Shuster's finest work. Sporting an intro by Stan Lee, Secret Identity is an incredible find of historic significance to comics art, but be warned that many could find it offensive. Recommended with caution.--Mike Rogers,

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book is Super, Man!, April 21, 2009

By 

Heather Malloy (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster (Hardcover)

I bought this amazing book because I always wanted to know whatever happened to Joe Shuster after the catastrophic lawsuit of 1948 to attempt to reclaim Superman. It was common knowledge that Siegel and Shuster lost everything, not only the lawsuit against DC Comics, but also any work from the comics industry. They fell on very hard times, and resurfaced only after the first Superman movie came out, when DC Comics paid them a modest pension till they died. I had no idea how Shuster survived during those years. It turns out he was doing fetish art collaborating with the Mob! And that's just the beginning!

"Secret Identity" tells the amazing story of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers (a group of Jewish-Hilter-hailing juvenile delinquents!) who inspired by Joe Shuster's drawings to commit horrible tortures and murders. We learn how the Mob was involved in distributing Shuster's porn in Times Square and how the police was getting paid off; how Wertham became indirectly involved with Shuster; how censorship worked against this forbidden material from New York City officials all the way up to the Supreme Court! It's one big surprise after another.

I think the images Shuster drew are at the same time a historic find (nobody till now knew what Shuster was up to after 1948), and a beautifully drawn array of eccentric sex acts, some surreal, even laughable, and some too real for comfort. What a range: whips, chains, cacti (yes, cacti!), red ants, hooded villains, alligators, girls in cages, mad pervy magicians... And so many of the characters look like Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen -every page is a startling revelation!

This fascinating book really poses the question: what was Shuster thinking? Did he have to do it? Was he into it? How did Shuster feel at being the architect of the super hero genera in comics, and also, although indirectly, the one who brought about the campaign against comics and their demise? We shall never know!

I treasure this book but I wonder if the material is still illegal? I'm hiding MY copy!