THE happening event HAPPENED! The club was packed, an amazing amount of books were sold to eager nightlife people, BDSM fetishists and comic books fans-what a crazy mix! And a good time was had by all! Need proof? Check out the pics below. The first portrait photo is by the incredible arteest Adrian Buckmaster of me and co-party planner Lena. The others are by super photographers Nicky Digital and Giovanna Anzaldi. More pics as they come in the next few days so sign up now for the RSS feed!

Lena and me. I’ve been a VERY bad author!

Besides Lena, the other party planner was my gorgeous daughter Valissa-half of her is gorgeous, anyway. Valissa, as Two-Face, is joined by another Batman villain, Poison Ivy.

One of the highlights of the party was live creations of Superman’s originating artist, Joe Shuster’s fetish art. Here’s one of the cover and you’ll see more as more pics come in.

Whip it! Whip it good!

I’m leering at the live cover recreation while my chaste editor, Charlie Kochman, is wholesomely checking out our brand-spanking new book, Secret Identity, The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams) for typos. Charlie was on his best behavior as his beautiful wife-to-be, Rachael, was present. My beautiful, but long-suffering, wife, Clizia, has long ago given up on me.

Me, the weirdest guy at the party, and that’s saying a lot, and the most beautiful girl at the party, Clizia the Great.

Coming! More photos as they come in the next few days. Send yours soon. Meanwhile order Secret Identity, The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster here.

Below is the poster. Aside from the coolest DJs in NYC, the bleeding edge fashion brand Mishka sponsorship, the mash-up of NYC nightlife people, kink people and comic fans please note that there will be tableaus of actors acting out scenes from Joe Shuster’s fetish art from the book! Spread the word, please, by any and all means. And you know the rote: Be there or…

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Craig will be discussing his new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster, on Friday April, 3 5-8 pm at Jim Hanley’s Universe in New York City.

They told me I have a face for radio, so I’m going to be on CBC (Canada Broadcasting Corp.) on Fri. the 3rd at 9:30 am. I will also be interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR Fresh Air. More details to come.

Well, actually I’m told that The Globe and Mail is The New York Times of Canada. Or The New York Times is The Globe and Mail of the U.S. But, anyway, The Globe just did a HUGE feature on Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster. The cover of their arts section, the Globe Review, has a way cool, eye-catching banner emblazoned all across the top. Then, there is a full page article inside titled Look! In the Shadows! It’s Sadomasochisticman! with three full illustrations. The article leads off with “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” Joe Shuster is Toronto born so that gets a lot of play. Here’s another quote from the fascinating, lengthy article:

“Now, thanks to the sleuthing archivist/designer/author and former Jim Henson associate Craig Yoe, Shuster’s cover is blown, and blown good…even a casual flip thorough its pages takes you to a naughty netherworld of bare-breasted babes taking the whip to the buttocks of compliant, rock-jawed males; of weeping lingerie-clad white women on trembling knees before muscular black males in tight swimtrunks; of cruel aristocrats in cravats and smoking jackets commanding women to kiss their slippers; of marijuana-smoking Jimmy Olsen look-alikes. Joe Shuster: We hardly knew ye!”

Below is the poster. Aside from the coolest DJs in NYC, the bleeding edge fashion brand Mishka sponsorship, the mash-up of NYC nightlife people, kink people and comic fans please note that there will be tableaus of actors acting out scenes from Joe Shuster’s fetish art from the book! Spread the word, please, by any and all means. And you know the rote: Be there or…

(click for a cloer look)

Was contacted by National Public Radio’s Fresh Air people today-woo-woo! And interviewed by a reporter from Publishers’ Weekly. Yay! And there’s other book signings coming up and appearances at an erotic reading at the Happy Ending niteclub in NYC and many more exciting things in the works I’ll be letting you know about here.

The poster for the awesome bookstore Politics and Prose (and I’ll be using the same graphic for the most excellent store Jim Hanley’s Universe) is below. It’s a colorized Joe Shuster illustration that’s one of my favorites in Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Supeman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster. I especially like it because it reminds me of my days when I was a minister. No, really!

This morning, under the title “Shame Award for Craig,” a “George D” posted the following message on the prestigious comics history message board, The Platinum List. I had posted an announcement about Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster...

Craig,
As much as I do not wish to be call you on something, this is something for the sake of the absent parties who cannot speak for themself (sic), that I must address.

The story of Siegel and Shuster is sad. The creators of not just Superman, but the ones who redefined the image of the super hero as well as the comic book did not deserve the hard times they recieved (sic). Granted they shouldnt (sic) have signed away Superman the way they did. Granted they didnt (sic) have clever father (sic) like Bob Kane did. Granted the industry should have found a place for them. In fact, In (sic) retrospect, one might wonder whether they did the right thing by suing DC Comics.

The Joe Shuster of the 1950s was not a happy man. He was a man who just lost his job, his creation and the law suit. From what I read, he was not the conquering hero with the best job in the world. He was a man full of saddness (sic). A man perhaps struggling to feed his family. Most men in that position might not be thinking straight and doing (sic) things they regret.

But to take the memory of the man who gave us so much who is now dead and try to sensationalize him as a sleeze (sic) artist for something which was either done by him in secret or made to look by him is levels of new low (sic) for you Craig.

Maybe not you (because I wonder if you are capable of shame) but I am sure there are many here who have done things they regret and to have those things paraded gleefully for the sake of a few shekels and to get some perverted titillating pleasure of seeing a hero fall is shameful.

Wheather (sic) he drew the alleged stuff (which I can assure you I will not buy) I cannot say. Assuming he did, wheather (sic) he saw anything wrong with it or not, I cannot say. Yet at the same point I do not think he would want to be remembered as the artist of this anonymous work. I believe he would much rather be remembered as we all remember him, the father of Superman. The one who gave us our first superhero, who stood for truth, justice, the american (sic) way, and morality.

So, with the greatest respect, I ask you Craig, show a little true compassion and love for others in your heart and show the dead some respect. You can be appreciated so much more if you gave up the image of a hugh hefner (sic) wanna be, or a guy who gets adolecent (sic) thrills for naked artwork.

You have said things that I felt were low taste before, but I have to say, with saddness (sic) as I not wish to say the above about anyone, this is a new low.

Try to better yourself Craig, not bring others down to your level.

Rexpectfully (sic),
George

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Steven Stwalley, Webmaster, The International Cartoonist Conspiracy responded:

George, just because an artist chooses to work “blue” is no reason to censor access to their artwork, especially after they are dead. I haven’t seen Craig’s book, but I think any artist of prominence should be able to be analyzed by their full body of work. In comics, it doesn’t get much more prominent than the creator of Superman. Like it or not, part of Shuster’s body of work is racy. For me, this doesn’t lessen his other work… it greatly informs it.

Kudos to Craig for bringing this work to light.

Leo De Sa, Co-Moderator of the Platinum List responded:

What the man said!

Fortunately, during the last century or so museums and art publishers all over the world have chosen to disclose and not hide away some of humanity’s most beautiful paintings and statues, depicting the human body even in highly suggestive poses or actions. Fortunately too, in spite of well- or ill-intentioned family members and sell-appointed defenders of public morals, such interesting pieces as private correspondence or posthumous books like Mark Twain’s dazzling Letters from the Earth could indeed be shown to those who want to peruse them. All of an artist or writer’s work, including the parts that weren’t originally meant to be widely shown, can be meaningful to those who want to know more about said artist or writer. This is certainly also true for comics artists and writers.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, however obtuse they may be. Just please don’t try to censor for the others. Certainly nobody has to purchase a book he doesn’t want to have.

For my part I will definitely buy Craig’s book on Shuster, even if it’s only half as entertaining as his other ones it will be a treat!

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Warren Bernard, who was an invaluable help to me on researching Secret Identity responded:

I had the pleasure of being the main historical researcher on Secret Identity. This took me from the Library of Congress to The National Archives. Along the way we discovered that these cartoons had such an impact that they were featured in New York State hearings, Senate hearings chaired by Estes Kefauver and most important of all, a New York City obscenity case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. This was in addition to these cartoons being linked directly to some very heinous crimes that outraged New York City.

I cannot think of another cartoon, comic, or comic strip that could say the same.

It would be a great loss to the history of comics if we had just let these go and did not turn up this new chapter in the history of comics. Especially since this all occurred right at the time the Comics Code was being formed and yes, in many articles of the day, both these Shuster cartoons and the Comics Code were written up in the same articles in the newspapers of the day, adding much fuel to the Comics Code fire.

When you read the full story, it will become clear that this was no ordinary series of sleazoid cartoons. Keep in mind, of all the sleaze being published at the time in the porn world, New York City picked these cartoons, these magazines, to take to court in an attempt to clean up Times Square.

To quote the man who wrote the introduction:

‘Nuff Said

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Jeet Heer, co-editor with Kent Worcester of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium responded:

I completely agree with what Warren (and others) have written: the material Craig found is historically fascinating and important. And I don’t think it reflects poorly on Shuster unless you have some fairly old-fashioned ideas about how sex should be depicted.

I’d also add that anyone who has looked at the early superhero comics will be aware that they were fairly kinky, full of bondage, spankings, etc. To think they were purely wholesome family entertainment is to forget how controversial they were. There was a real overlap between the worlds of the early comics and that of girlie magazines and soft-core porn. Craig’s research helps illuminate that overlap.

Craig here. I welcome more discourse on this subject in the comments section below…

This is going to be big, I’m so excited! All three editions of the highly circulated Metro, the freebie newspaper handed out in the subways of New York, Boston and Philly, have the cover of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster on the front page, above fold with the headline “Superman’s Sexy Secret”. Then there’s a whole half-page article inside. They did an interview with me on the phone yesterday when I was down at the Library of Congress researching my NEXT book. Read by so many folks this article has got to lead to lots more!

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No mercy for Superman!

(click to read the article)

I dig the above headline. And so many great visuals!

NB: DJ David B writes to say that Amazon now has copies in the warehouse and people ordering should have the book in their mailboxes real soon, March 17th! Order now, order here.

It’s pretty well known that DC editors sometimes swiped ideas for comic covers from old pulps. Editors would actually come up with intriguing cover images this way, and then have the writers do scripts based on ‘em-a neat way to work! Wish there were people still doing that-coming up with the covers first, then scripts, that is, not stealing ideas!)

Above is an old pulp and the rip-off Jimmy Olsen cover below…

While trolling through the blogosphere this weekend, I happened on this image below from, of all places, the Chicago Spanking Review blog, which, among other NSFW things, hosts a repository of fetish comic strip and book images.

Discovering this comic book cover below I was flabbergasted how incredibly similar the scene on this Lois Lane (#73; artist Kurt Schaffenberger) is to the image from Nights of Horror that Joe Shuster drew a decade and a half before, and that I used on the cover of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster. On the Lois Lane cover (entitled Shock Story of the Year!) there’s Lois with her whip, Superman bound to a bench, and a figure, this time not a girl, strapped to a wall.

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It could be all certainly a coincidence, of course, or the product of my very overactive imagination. But the parallels are uncanny. And it opened up a thought to me that I had never considered, even while spending a year writing Secret Identity. Were people at DC aware of Joe Shuster’s activites in p()rn? As my book makes clear, as does the most excellent book published before mine, Men of Tomorrow - Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones, the roots of DC Comics, just before the comics, was with p()rn publishing. There had been, and probably were, people at DC that took a professional, and maybe even a personal, interest in published p()rn. And the DC offices were in walking distance of the Times Square bookstores that sold Nights of Horror. And it was the talk of the town and press because of the Brooklyn Thriill Killers. Besides, the art world is a small world and gossip carries far, especially something so juicy like Joe Shuster, the artist behind Superman, their caped cash cow, was drawing fetish art.

So, t’s not at all out of the question that people at DC in the period of the 50s and early 60s knew about this fetish material drawn by Joe Shuster-and maybe even were inspired to create a cover idea for Lois Lane and the resulting story from one of Joe’s sado-masochistic illustrations! At least they weren’t inspired by Nights of Horror like the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, the Jewish neo-Nazi juvenile delinquents that were inspired to horse-whip girls and to murder bums, according to Dr. Frederic Wertham. More on that in the book and more details on the blog later…

Be sharp as a whip, order right now the book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster here, and it’ll be in your mailbox in a few short weeks.