Talk about a crazy secret identity. Joe Shuster, the famed artist who created the Superman comic series was also the man responsible for the now legendary underground S&M porn called “Nights of Horror,”  that sold in Times Square in the early fifties.

The back story is that Shuster and his writing partner, Jerry Siegel, had sold Superman for 130 dollars and when they sued to get the rights back they lost and promptly got a lifetime of shunn from the comic book industry. Falling on hard times, Shuster turned to drawing fetish art to get by. 

Everyone agrees today that the art is undoubtedly the work of Joe Shuster, but nobody could connect the dots at the time to say this looks like Superman, or Lois Lane, or Jimmy Olsen, or Lex Luthor. Banned by the U.S. Supreme Court the publisher and the printer both went to jail but nobody came after Shuster because somehow they never made the connection to Superman or to Shuster as the artist.

The whole saga comes to light via editor Craig Yoe’s new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster, published by Abrams,  the leading art book publisher in the world.  If you like Lois Lane, wait until you see her taking a whipping from a man who looks very much like Clark Kent!

The sexed up art isn't the only draw with a story that involves the Mob, showgirls, the famed anti-comic book crusader Dr. Frederic Wertham, Senate investigations, cops on payola, teenage girls being horse-whipped in the park and of course the neo-Nazi Jewish juvenile delinquents who were inspired by Shuster’s art known as the Brooklyn Thrill Killers. It all makes the latest Batman movie seem pretty tame.

The book is out April 1st and according to Yoe there was just too much material for just one book so he's made the rest available online for anyone to see at http://secret-identity.net.

Dorsey Shaw is the Video Content Manager for Air America Media.