The Gotham Group has picked up the movie rights to Craig Yoe's wonderful Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, which reveals Shuster's work on the controversial BDSM underground comic series The Nights of Terror from the 1950s, during a time where he had become estranged from Superman's publisher DC Comics. The comics - which feature lookalikes of Superman, Lois Lane and Lex Luthor in various scenes of S&M play - were named as an inspiration behind a crime spree of the era that involved murder, torture and humiliation of victims.

The Gotham Group is currently trying to find writers for the project; no date for release has been announced.

Gotham to reveal Shuster's 'Secret' [Variety]

In an announcement, the California Court presiding over the ongoing Siegel/DC/Warners Superman case declared that both parties come to an agreement of an impartial expert who can help explain the complicated issues surrounding the case following concerns over the arguments put forward by both sides in the recent trial:

The Court envisions that the Court-appointed special master/expert will not only submit a report in advance of trial, be subject to being deposed prior to trial, and proffer testimony at trial on the issues in question, but will also, in preparing for such tasks, be afforded the authority to appoint experts and other specials to assist him or her in performing those duties.

One of the reasons said expert is needed? Probably to help control such comments as those offered by Siegel family attorney Marc Toberoff, who yesterday unequivocally said

...in 2013, the Siegels, along with the estate of Joe Shuster, will own the entire original copyright to Superman...

The problem being, according to the very legal decision Toberoff was responding to with those comments, that's not necessarily the case:

Although it is true that, should the Shuster estate be successful in terminating the grant to the copyright in Action Comics No. 1, then at that point in time plaintiffs and the Shuster estate, not DC Comics, would hold the entirity of the copyright published in that comic book and would sit, assuming common representation, in much the same position Warner Bros. was said to have sat at the beginning of the negotiations over the Superman film agreement... The problem with this line of reasoning, however, lies in its speculative nature... It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Shuster estate will be successful in terminating the grant to the Superman material published in Action Comics No. 1.

Never mind the court. We need our own Superman legal expert just to understand who owns what part of the character. Can't we all just agree that Kal-El would want everyone to sort this out without needing to get lawyers involved, anyway?

Judge calls for special master in Superman case [Blog@Newsarama.com]

The book in question is called Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster, and it's part of ComicArts, the new graphic novel imprint from publisher Harry N. Abrams. Centering around Superman co-creator Shuster's relatively unknown 1950s sideline at illustrator for S&M magazine Nights of Horror, the heavily-illustrated book is sure to make you think twice about what Superman does when he's not saving the world.
Charles Kochman, Executive Editor of the imprint, explains:

They are undoubtedly the work of Joe Shuster, but nobody connected the dots at the time to say this looks like Superman, or Lois Lane, or Jimmy Olsen, or Lex Luthor... The material was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and although the publisher and the printer both went to jail, nobody came after Shuster because somehow they never made the connection to Superman or to Shuster as the artist... Also involved were a group of neo-Nazi thugs called the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, who whipped innocent women and set fire to vagrants and murdered them. These kids were interviewed by [anti-comics crusader Dr. Frederic] Wertham when 'Nights of Horror' magazines were cited as inspiration for their crimes. The whole story and the art are revealed here by Craig Yoe for the first time. This is going be an amazing book. If you like Lois Lane, wait until you see someone who appears to be her whipping a man who looks very much like Clark Kent!

The book, featuring racy illustrations sure to illuminate at least one person's internal fan-fiction, is released in April. To add even more surreality to the whole exercise, it comes complete with an introduction from Stan Lee.

Images from Secret-Identity.net, the preview site for the book.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19402">Editor Kochman Talks Abrams' ComicArts Imprint [ComicBookResources]

The discovery of this alternate Superman was made by Jeff Trexler as he worked his way through the masses of documents made public by the current lawsuit between Siegel's heirs and DC Comics over who owns Superman:

As Jerry Siegel would later explain, in 1934 Joe Shuster had become discouraged with the Superman newspaper strip and decided to let it go. His departure prompted Siegel to look for a replacement, so he sent an inquiry to [then Buck Rogers artist, Russell] Keaton. Which we have in these rediscovered documents in Siegel’s follow-up letter outlining the origin story and touting the prospect of selling the strip to the Bell Syndicate.

Siegel's letter to Keaton allows us to see the Superman that could have been. From his introductory notes:

We begin with "Superman" as a child and follow his history all the way up to maturity when the real story begins: of his adventures in helping those in need... The story of his youth will run at great length before we detail his adventures as an adult. Early, he will find that his great strength, instead of making friends for him, cause people to fear him. Mothers will not permit their children to associate with him, he will be hated in school sports because he never loses, etc. We can weave a very human story about him.

Perhaps most interesting is the entirely different origin for the character:

In his laboratory, the last man on earth worked furiously. He had only a few moments left. Giant cataclysms were shaking the reeling planet, destroying making. It was in its last days, dying... The last man placed his infant babe within a small time-machine he had completed, launching it as the laboratory walls caved-in upon him. The time vehicle flashed back thru the centuries, alighting in the primitive year, 1935AD.

So much for "strange visitor from another planet." If this version of the character had been the first to see print - and in a newspaper, as opposed to a comic book - you have to wonder if he would have been so successful, and whether we would've had more time travel stories as a result. What if, as they say...

Superman's Hidden History: The Other "First" Artist [Newsarama]

The story, entitled "The Reign Of The Superman", is reprinted from the third issue of the wonderfully-named Science Fiction: The Vanguard of Future Civilization, a zine self-produced by the future creators of the Man of Steel (Interestingly enough, when DC's Superman returned from his "death" in the early '90s, he did so in a storyline titled "Reign Of The Supermen"; unusual coincidence or knowing reference?) five years before the more familiar version of the character appeared in the first issue of Action Comics. This Superman, however, is somewhat less humble than the one we all know and love, as he proves with this expositionary introduction:

I can do four things that no one else on the planet can emulate. They are: intercept interplanetary messages, read the mind of anyone I desire, by sheer mental concentration force ideas into people's heads, and throw my vision to any spot in the universe.

While the story itself has little to do with the character that has come to be known by the same name, it's a fascinating view into a different course for popular culture's favorite alien son.

Reign Of The Superman via SF Signal