I’ve been absent from blogging for half a year-but here I am with a brand spanking new blog. Let me explain…

One of the big things that kept me away was the book I was working on, “Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.” Depending on how you count them, I’ve done, or been involved with, around fifty books. But no book took as much effort—and no book was was as full of surprises to me (and I’m gonna assume the readers)—as this new one, due out April 1st!

A while back, I found a cheaply printed, vintage porno booklet (below) in a dusty cardboard box at a rare book sale, and exclaimed to myself , “Oh, my God, Joe Shuster!” And that was just the beginning of surprises. I sold the idea to Charlie Kochman at Abrams of doing a book about the art of this incredibly rare series. I eventually tracked down the complete run at much effort and cost—16 books and more! After I got my contract, I found out a WHOLE lot more—the gripping behind-the-scenes story connected with mobsters, showgirls, the anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham, neo-Nazi Jewish juvenile delinquents, Senate investigations, Supreme Court banning, cops on the take, flogging of young teenage girls and…MURDERS!

(click for a closer look)

When starting a book, I often put together a cover first, because it’s fun to do and it also gives me a “mood piece” to think about when writing, researching, and beginning to think about the design of the book’s interior. I threw it to the great artist and designer at YOE! Studio, Luke McDonnell, to get things started. He chose a brilliant illustration of Shuster’s and dramatically cropped it. He then added simple type to keep it sophisticated, which was the feeling that I was after. I suggested some tweaks, then we showed it to Charlie, who loved it as much as we did and pronounced the cover ,”Perfect—finito—we won’t change a thing!”

(click for a closer look)

(click for a closer look)

Here’s Shuster’s illlustration Luke originally chose to base the cover on. You can see a bit of the shoddy printing this material had, with the type from the page on the back showing through (in fact, in the parlance of the printing industry, this is called “show through.”) Although the cover of the book eventually changed, there’s still things about this original one that I love.

In the course of looking over and over the material as I began to research and reading the booklets again and again, it suddenly dawned on me to change plans and use one of the number of illustrations that bore a striking resemblance to Superman and Lois (though, of course, they weren’t really them.) At this point, a number of months into the book, this wasn’t so much a “AH HA!” but a loud “DUH!” So, by this time, Luke was on to other things and I enlisted Mike Hill, another super designer at the studio, to put together my idea. We were still keeping the design a stark black, white, and red with simple type, all of which I was really commited to. Below is the illustration of Joe’s (by this time I felt we were on a first name basis) that I decided to use and the resulting new cover.

(click for a closer look)

(click for a closer look)

Around this time, Abrams had got a new Art Director, Andrea Colvin. Andrea saw what we were up to and suggested I try a more comic book-y type. Man, I hated the idea, I thought it lacked the sophistication I was after. But I wanted to play well with others, so I gave gave it a shot. Clizia Gussoni, my favorite designer at the studio, who also happens to be my wife, and I put together the new version. I bugged the Hell out of her each step of the way (we actually enjoy working together very, very much.) The new book cover had a 3-D superhero-ish logo, which worked well with the Superman and Lois look-a-likes—though I emphasize, they ain’t them. I thought I’d go with a more comic book palette, too, blue and red in the fonts, and yellow wrapping around from the spine. I didn’t know it, but Charlie said there was a name for this, “wrap-around spine.” And then, was it Charlie that suggest scanning some newsprint for the background? Do you like that? Then it was me. Do you hate that? Then it was Charlie. By this time, I was loving the design so I didn’t look back. I only much happily added Stan Lee’s name when I secured him to do the intro—I’m glad Stan wasn’t too tied up!

One idea I came up with all my lonesome was using the right section of the illustration with the young lady in the background tied up, and wrapping it around to the inside for the cover flap. Man, I lucked into that idea and love it. You’ll have to hold the book to get the full effect, but here’s a pic:

(click for a closer look)

I’m gonna blog regularly about “Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster,” so, sign up for the RSS feed.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you some of Joe’s S&M art that didn’t make it into the book. There’s lots of juicy stuff that couldn’t fit in the book, and even some amazing revelations I’ve learned since going to press. I’ll share all this on this new blog The Secrets Behind Secret Identity. Meanwhile, order “Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster” here so that you will be the first on your block to have one!

You can contact me at my email yoecomix(at)hotmail(dot)com

Secretly,
Craig

P.S. I have the usual blog-erific comment section so feel free to add your 2-cents where it sez “click to comment” at the bottom of each post!

P.P.S. Fellow bloggers and news sites, please give me a link, I’d dig that the most to say the least.