Superman's Into S&M? Who Would Have Guessed?

 

Ok, so the headline is a bit of a lie, but it's still sort of true.  It's not really Superman himself that is into S&M.  It's actually one of his creators, Joe Shuster.  In the upcoming book entitled Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, we'll see Superman like we've never seen him before, and it was all drawn by the man who created him.

 

The book itself is a collection of Shuster's art from the 1950's that he did for an S&M Magazine called Nights of Horror.  While finding a treasure trove of erotic art by the man who helped create Superman is interesting enough, what makes this book truly fascinating is that most of the characters depicted in the drawings bear a striking resemblence to the Man of Steel and his friends and foes.

 

Charles Cochman, the Executive Editor of ComicArts, the graphic novel publisher putting the book out, has the following to say about it.

 

They are undoubtedly the work of Joe Shuster, but nobody connected the dots at the time to say this looks like Superman, or Lois Lane, or Jimmy Olsen, or Lex Luthor... The material was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and although the publisher and the printer both went to jail, nobody came after Shuster because somehow they never made the connection to Superman or to Shuster as the artist... Also involved were a group of neo-Nazi thugs called the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, who whipped innocent women and set fire to vagrants and murdered them. These kids were interviewed by [anti-comics crusader Dr. Frederic] Wertham when 'Nights of Horror' magazines were cited as inspiration for their crimes. The whole story and the art are revealed here by Craig Yoe for the first time. This is going be an amazing book. If you like Lois Lane, wait until you see someone who appears to be her whipping a man who looks very much like Clark Kent!

 

Hot damn!  This is definitely something I'm going to have to pick up.  I've always had a love for the hidden histories of comics' golden age heroes.  The fact that Wonder Woman was created by a psychrist with a big bondage fetish and was essentially a bondage character when she first debuted is something I've always found fascinating.  Now to find out that Mr. Squeaky Clean Clark Kent himself also has a creator with an interesting fetish history?  Well that's just downright exciting if you ask me.  Plus I love golden age comic art, and the design of the book looks gorgeous.

 

Plus, it has an introduction by none other than Stan "The Man" Lee.  How can you go wrong?  The book will be coming out in April.  There's no word yet on how much this will cost.  But seriously, does it matter how much it costs?  Who hasn't at some point in their life wandered what Superman's and Lois' sex life was like?  Isn't finding out worth whatever they're going to charge for this?

 

(Via IO9)