Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created Superman, the
first costumed superhero, as Cleveland teenagers. Years later, in 1938,
they sold most of the rights to the character to DC Comics for a mere
$130. DC continued employing the two to script and draw Superman, and
they made good money — but the publisher made more. The two
eventually sued DC, attempted to reclaim the rights to the great
American hero. In 1948, a disappointing settlement netted them some
cash, but DC stopped providing work for the two, and they fell on hard
times.
Jerry was able to find work as a writer and editor. He was hired for
a large salary at Ziff-Davis, and then at Famous Funnies, in hopes that
the Superman lightning would strike twice. When this didn’t happen,
Siegel was quick-as-lightning fired.
Joe had an even harder time. The comic-book industry was shrinking
from attacks by do-gooders and competition for kids’ eyeballs from
television. Superheroes, so vital to the World War II period, were
vanishing from the scene. Now romance, animation-inspired funny
animals, western, crime and horror comics were competing for attention.
Adding to Joe’s problem was that his diagrammatic style was thought of
as archaic. There were strong, second generation comic-book
artists like Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Bob Powell and Jack Kirby
filling the panels with virtuoso art.
A contemporary cartoonist of Shuster’s, Gill Fox, shared with
me that “Joe became a delivery boy for a printer, and one day had to
bring some printing proofs to the DC offices. The publisher, Harry
Donenfeld, spied him in the lobby, slipped him a mere twenty bucks and
instructed him to never make deliveries there again.”
In early 1954, Joe’s career took yet another turn. He illustrated
kinky tales of adventure, bondage and torture in sixteen booklets,
Nights of Horror, along with a handful of other lurid
titles. The publishing company was Malcla. The “Mal” of Malcla
was Eugene Maletta, a printer in Queens operating out of his father’s
basement. In an interview for this book, Maletta recalls that the “Cla”
of Malcla was a “Clancy,” the writer of Nights of Horror. Clancy’s writing for these potboilers consisted of purloining stories
from old, spicy pulps. Professor of Erotology and Sexology at the
Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality Dr. C. J. Scheiner, who
has been called “one of the world’s foremost authorities on
erotica,” told me he met the co-publisher “Cla” (as he refers to him)
when he bought his book collection. Scheiner reports that “the
co-publisher detailed how he got his neighbor, the nearly blind and
totally broke Shuster, to do the job and also the fate of the original
drawings.”
In Nights of Horror, there was little of the heroism
and virtue of Superman, but all of the villainy and tension. There was
spanking, flagellation, bloodletting, humiliation, teenage sex cults,
torture devices, exhibitionism and voyeurism (not to mention lesbianism
and interracial sex), though little nudity. These BDSM
(bondage-discipline dominance-submission sadism-masochism) tales were
an equal opportunity employer. Women were tied up, whipped and spanked,
but could eagerly be the tie-ers, whippers and spankers too.
The art was technically some of Joe’s best. It was pure Shuster
work, without assistants or ghosts. It employed fine pen-and-ink work
embellished by a favorite tool of the artist’s, lithographic pencil.
Despite his weak eyesight handicap, Joe pushed, and the results were
sure and strong. Shuster always had a great ability to render
attractive women, though in Nights of Horror, they are
often more sad victims than sassy vixens.
Some of the characters look like dead-ringer, bizarro versions of
Superman/Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor. Of course,
we know it’s not really them, but these drawings smack of the citizens
of Metropolis gone wild.
Marya Mannes lambasted the writing of Nights of Horror in
The Reporter Reader in 1954 as “cigar-store Spillane, more
explicit in its sadism, more viciously saccharine in its romantic
passages.” The stories, like “Blood Lust,” “The Flesh Merchants” and
“The Bride Wore Leather,” were bylined by Clancy’s salacious
pseudonyms, like Ted Rand, Wood LaCrosse and Rod Lashwell. The S&M
scenarios had pulp-type villains, scantily clad damsels in distress and
even a few handsome heroes, though they usually didn’t get there just
in the nick of time.
The 5½-by-8-inch Nights of Horror had the most amateur
production values imaginable. The copy wasn’t professionally typeset;
it was right out of an ordinary typewriter with clogged-up keys. The
sometimes illegible reproduction was a horror in itself. But all this
actually gives Nights of Horror some populist appeal. The
rudimentary black-and-white printing even foretells the feel of ’60s
underground comix.
When shown Nights of Horror illustrations, comic-book
historian Ron Goulart said, “I missed this phase of Joe Shuster’s
career the first time around. It’s somewhat sad to see the guy who
co-created Superman ending up drawing for what obviously must’ve been
low-paying markets. There’s no doubt that this is Shuster’s work. Most
of the women look like Lois Lane, though better endowed. The chap
slugging the bearded lecher [pages 116–117] strikes a pose often
utilized by the young Superman as well as private eye Slam Bradley in
Detective Comics. The lad who is being led astray by the smoking
blonde [page 55] looks like a jaded Jimmy Olsen.”
Bill Blackbeard, founder-director of the San Francisco Academy of
Comic Art and editor of The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper
Comics, asserts that Nights of Horror is “a god-awful
discovery, but obviously something done in loathing and despair to
bring in desperately needed bucks. To my scalded eye, the work is
undeniably Shuster’s, something almost certainly undertaken for a
fly-by-night publisher.”
Dr. Bradley Ricca, Ph.D., from the Department of English at Case
Western Reserve University and a Siegel and Shuster historian, has a
more positive take. “Nowhere is Joe identified as the artist. That
being said, it is definitely him. Not only in the way the squints of
the eyes and jaws are drawn, but also the foreshortened limbs and the
use of pencil. It is also seemingly some of his best work! This shows
he wasn’t completely blind at this time.”
Did Joe Shuster have to take on Nights of Horror?
Other comic-book artists were struggling, but finding work in
advertising, education and industry. Was creating pornography an act of
financial desperation? Or was drawing characters who looked like their
famous counterparts, only in compromising situations, an act of
retribution? Or is it possible that there was something in Joe that
enjoyed this type of fantasy material?
Are there any clues to be found in what we know about Shuster’s
romantic relationships? We do know of a few of the women in Joe’s
life.
Jolan Kovacs, Joe’s first muse, changed her name to Joanne Carter
when she became a full-time model. She posed for painters, illustrators
and photographers in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, and was a
cigarette girl in a West Coast club. Joanne, an attractive and strong
woman, was encouraging and loyal to Jerry and Joe. “To me she was Lois
Lane,” Joe said in an early 1980s interview. In the same article,
Joanne tells of going on a date with Joe to a National Cartoonists
Society costume ball. It was at the Plaza Hotel, in New York, in 1948.
“Joe took me down to the Brooks costume company and rented an enormous
ball gown for me so I looked exactly like Dixie Dugan [a popular
comic-strip character of the time known for her stylish clothes]. Jerry
and Joe were having problems at the time — there was
litigation — and I just didn’t feel like going as Lois Lane
under those circumstances.” Joanne came with Joe but left with Jerry
Siegel. “After this reunion at the ball, Jerry and I started dating,
and a few months later, we were married.”
Joanne reveals, “I never did any fashion modeling; I was never tall
enough. I wanted to grow more, but this was as high as I got.” Maybe
her lack of height is why Joe seemed to be content that his “Lois” went
off with Jerry rather than him after the ball.
Jerry Robinson recalls, “Joe and I double-dated a number of times.
He was shy with women and I guess it’s no secret to say that he loved
tall, beautiful, intelligent women. I don’t think that is uncommon
among very short men. I think maybe it adds to their stature. I
remember one time I got him a date with one of my cousins, who was
a brilliant girl. I think she graduated first in her class of over one
thousand students, and she was very attractive. We had a lovely
evening. When we got back to my place and I said, ‘Well, did you have a
good time — how did you like my cousin?’ Joe says, ‘Oh, yeah, she
was great, but she was too short.'”
Dr. Bradley Ricca interviewed Joe’s sister, Jean Shuster-Peavy. She
confided, “Actually, Joe loved tall, beautiful showgirls and models,
and he dated a lot of them! He was what you call a ‘Stagedoor Johnny.’
He dated a lot of models — beautiful ones — he’d just pick
the most beautiful models and girls!”
Ricca shared a little-known fact: “Joe was married in 1975 to Judy
Calpini, a Las Vegas showgirl. They married in San Diego; Jerry and
Joanne were there. The marriage lasted maybe only a few months, I
think. That was the only time he married.” This was apparently such a
blip in Joe’s life that, later, Joanne Carter told an interviewer, “He
never married.”
Whether his motive was for love or for money, Shuster could never
have imagined the nights of horror that lay ahead.
Reprinted with permission from Abrams
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.