Back in the day, when I and everyone else, knew almost nothing about the underworld of the New York fetish magazine publishers and artists, the covers of Nights of Horror always set raised the question: who was the illustrator? Although always scarce, whenever I had one I would think: "I know who this artist is...but can't make the connection". As years past and connections made with other dealers and collectors there was strong speculation that Joe Shuster, one of the creators of the Superman character of comic book fame, was the illustrator of Nights of Horror. Then in 2009 Craig Yoe's book Secret Identity, The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster was published by Abrams and the story provided, not only to be true, but completely fascinating.
There were sixteen books published in the Nights of Horror series, all illustrated by Shuster. You can find all you need to know here. Recently I purchased a collection of digest sized magazines and although there were no original editions of Nights of Horror there was a reprint of one of the books in the series. Of greater interest were two additional titles that I am sure were also illustrated by Shuster, but not mentioned in Yoe's book. Posted here are covers plus illustrations from House of Tears, Education in Submission and the House Of Horrors reprint.
_____
No comments:
Post a Comment