Radio Sweethearts

Ahem. Hello.

Matt and Kerry are off in New York, or Boston, or some place where it hasn’t gotten hot enough to fry people’s commonsense yet. My name is Zachary Whitten. I run a seedy little corner of the Internet called the Brain Release Valve. I try to keep up with the zeitgeist and the horror show that we call human culture. I’m the man who married the Radio Sweethearts, and in retribution, they’ve given me the keys to this place and told me to make it go.

(Matt, I’ll never forgive you for making me type that password to post this.)

Now, this is a task I’m approached with much consternation. I told the R/S kiddies that I wouldn’t go off on one of my obscenity laced tirades about the death of whatever-the-hell. This was a problem since I, at best, am an over-educated one-trick pony that does little else but yell things and drink all the booze in the place. I haven’t posted anything yet because I didn’t know what to post. My reliance on dropping the F-bomb or talking about people’s predilections to mangle their genitalia had paralyzed me.

Then, a ray of light came down from the heaven to help show me the way. Well, not literally. I don’t do those kind of drugs anymore. The ray of light was a phone call from a foul mouthed Southern belle, and the way was a Fresh Air story she was listening to about Joe Shuster’s work on a series of fetish comic books in the 1950s. But this was good, since I was eying a bottle of whiskey at the moment she called and considering getting completely blotto and writing a screed about my man-crush on Kai Ryssdal. (Don’t you judge me.)

My scatologically obsessed muse had come through in the moment when I needed her most. Terry Gross was lending her dulcet tones to the interview of one Craig Yoe. Turns out that Yoe had just published a book examining the work that Joe Shuster did for a series of S&M/horror comics called Nights of Horror.

Shuster, for those that have that nagging thread in the back of their heads that they know the name but can’t quite place it, was half of the team of Siegel and Shuster. They created the most important property in comic book history – Superman.

Yoe’s book is a mix of “history and speculation” as he puts it. There is definite, factual history about Shuster, comic books, and the world at large in the 1950s, but there is also a lot of speculation. No one really knows why Shuster worked on these under-the-counter sex books. Some people think it is because he was dead broke and needed the money. Some think it was to get back at DC for shorting him on merchandising rights to Superman. It is all just speculation, though. It is impossible to point to a reason and definitively go “This is why.”

In the interview, Gross goes right for the metaphorical throat of the story, getting Yoe to describe the content and character of these drawings with lovely bits like “…a man menaces a young girl with a cactus, and there is the pouring of red ants down another young lady’s panties.” Then a pause, and a moment where he says, “I could be more explicit.”

I swear at that instant you can hear every comic book nerd and closet deviant leaning over in their chair and going “Oh…really?”

For a while, Yoe and Gross circle around the similarities between the visuals in a Nights of Horror book and a Superman book. Yes, Superman looks like the guy chained to a bed. Yes, the women either abusing or being abused look like Lois Lane and Lana Lang. But, the inferences they are trying to draw that maybe Shuster was trying to get back at DC are stretches at best. As some one who’s worked with character development and artists, it is far easier to copy something previously done into a new setting than it is to start from scratch. The characters look similar because it was easier for Shuster to do.

After getting the baseline discussion of the book out of the way, Gross turns the interview toward the events that were going on in the world while Shuster worked on Nights of Horror. Specifically, the Brooklyn Thrill Kill murders and the ensuing crusade against comic books. They talk about how the murders eventually lead to a Supreme Court ruling where even the ACLU sided against the publishers of Nights of Horror. The Court ordered the books destroyed immediately, which is why Yoe’s discovery of this work is so interesting.

Wrappings things up, Gross and Yoe discuss the permeating nature of fetishism in the 50s. Gross points out how all of the Westerns had women bound and gagged, then Yoe talks about how the comedies of the day had spanking scenes. Coming back to super-heroes, Yoe drives home the point when he talks about that super-heroes are beings above us; inherently the dom in the sub/dom relationship.

This whole discourse between the two of them is unintentionally humorous for me, because never once did they entertain the notion that Shuster might have enjoyed what he was doing. The fact that Shuster might have been kinky is the elephant in the room for the whole interview. It is commonly accepted that the creator of Wonder Woman based the character off his S&M bondage fantasies, why is it so hard to think the same thing about one of the creators of Superman?

Oh, Christ, this just short of a thousand words about Superman porn, isn’t it? Maybe I should have just gotten bladdered and talked about how Kai Ryssdal is dreamy, even if he might be just a little smarmy. Well, at least I got through the whole thing without threatening anyone with a spiny appendage.

Matt and Kerry will be back on Sunday. I might write something else tomorrow. But now, I have to go root through their mail.

You can find the Fresh Air interview with Craig Yoe here.