For years it was an open secret among comic book aficionados that a course of pervy passion ran through the art form. All those fetish costumes, the boots, the battles for dominance with evil masters! In recent years, however, the S&m elements of comic book fantasies have drifted to the forefront.

The movement of frankness about BDSM in comics didn’t begin with Alan Moore and Watchmen, but it might well have. The Night Owl character admits that a sexual undercurrent drove superheroes to don the costumes, just before he has quasi-vanilla fetish sex with Jupiter in the first chapter (and then later). Still, before that the reader had Tank Girl, a punk-Domme character, the various versions of Bat- and Cat-girls, the beautiful booted Dommes of Jim Steranko’s short-lived residency at Marvel Comics in the ’60s, and of course the notorious bondage imagery of Wonder Woman, the subject of a book of reporting by Jill Lepore and then a movie about the character’s creator, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017), with Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, and Bella Heathcote, recreating the threesome that Ms Lepore chronicled.

Comic books have been a repository of straight, gay, sadomasochistic, probably even necrophilliac fantasies from the beginning, in a way much as the parent groups decried from a nevertheless ignorant perch outside comicdom back in the 1950s. Their protests, along with the book Seduction of the Innocent, and its author’s testimony before congress resulted in a “needle drop” on extreme comics such as the E. C. Horror Library, followed by the institution of the comic book code, just as 20 years earlier the movie industry was thrust into the Procrustean bed of the censorious Production Code. Comic books went from the creepy Cryptkeeper to anodyne Archie almost over night.

Nevertheless, even amid this prophylactic environment, cartoonists managed to sneak controversial imagery, destined to wet the appetite of an already established bondage freak, or flip a mental switch in a burgeoning deviant. Such a moment occurred in February of 1973, with Superman, Issue No. 261. The story is called “Slave Of Star Sapphire!”, and recounts how a character named Carol Ferris, a crossover figure from the Green Lantern comic book, who under the misbelief that Superman has attacked the Lantern, turns into Star Sapphire and battles the Man of Steel, defeating him with the aid of a necklace that gives her mind control over her foe. [Superman gets out of the situation when Lois Lane dons a duplicate Star Sapphire suit and confuses the commands.]

Thus, Star Sapphire is in the remarkable and memorable position to hover over the kneeling Superman and demand, “I command you to kiss my boot, Superman …Let the whole world see you’ve become my slave!”

This cover must have been mind-boggling to certain sensibilities. Given that this is the Internet and there are no new ideas, others have broached the subject of this cover, including the blog at the English Mansion.

I know nothing about the credited cover artist, Nick Cardy, nor the credited story author, Cary Bates, so its difficult to speculate about their motivations. And in general D. C. comics, especially Superman, tended toward science fiction with invasions and transformations (Superman becoming a king ant), and adventures in space, while Marvel specialized in neurosis, self-doubt, dark arts, and masochism (apart from the intergalactic concerns of Jack Kirby). This story, “Slave of Star Sapphire” fits neatly into the science fiction orientation.

Still, one has to admire the attention to detail here, in Superman’s humble pose, as close to the ground as possible, his puckered lips about to descend upon the leather toe of the go-go boot, and the coup de grace detail of his open right hand, palm up, in a state of complete supplication. One can even appreciate the spread, booted legs of Lois Lane standing in the background.

One final note: Lois Lane herself has not received her due as a complex character who is not the simple ornament to, or recipient of Superman’s heroics. Throughout out her own spin-off comic she had a number of dominant moments, including in the issue illustrated below. Just what the hell was going on in that story? And what a great illustrator of the female form was this artist, carefully capturing the kinetic beautify of a woman furiously whipping.