Comic Book Resources

Yoe's Secret Identity optioned for period film

Straight out of left field comes word that a book dedicated to Joe Shuster's 1950s fetish art has been optioned for a film.

Variety reports the Gotham Group has picked up the rights to Craig Yoe's Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, published earlier this year by Abrams ComicArts.

The book identifies Shuster as the anonymous creator behind largely unknown S&M illustrations that appeared in The Nights of Horror booklets in the early '50s. The books, which were sold under the counter in Times Square shops, helped to fuel the comics-censorship movement of the era -- and were even linked to a brutal crime spree by a group called the Brooklyn Thrill Killers.

According to the trade paper, the film will use the crime spree and Shuster "to paint a period drama."