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The Complete Works of Fletcher Hanks #1
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!
Welcome to the bizarre world of Fletcher Hanks, Super Wizard of the Inkwell. Fletcher Hanks worked for only a few years in the earliest days of the comic book industry (1939-1941). Because he worked in a gutter medium for second-rate publishers on third-rate characters, his work has been largely forgotten. But among aficionados he is legendary. At the time, comic books were in their infancy. The rules governing their form and content had not been established. In this Anything Goes era, Hanks' work stands out for its thrilling experimentation. At once both crude and visionary, cold and hot as hell, Hanks' work is hard to pigeon hole. One thing is for certain: the stuff is bent. Hanks drew in a variety of genres depicting science-fiction saviors, white women of the jungle, and he-man loggers. Whether he signed these various stories "Henry Fletcher" or "Hank Christy" or "Barclay Flagg" there is no mistaking the unique outsider style of Fletcher Hanks.
Cartoonist Paul Karasik (co-adapter of Paul Auster's City of Glass, and co-author of The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family) has spent years tracking down these obscure and hard to find stories buried in the back of long-forgotten comic book titles. Karasik has also uncovered a dark secret: why Hanks disappeared from the comics scene. This book collects 15 of his best stories in one volume followed by an afterword which solves the mystery of "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks," the mysterious cartoonist who created a hailstorm of tales of brutal retribution...and then mysteriously vanished.
2008 Eisner Award WINNER: Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books
2008 Eisner Award Nominee: Best Short Story, "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks?" by Paul Karasik
Cartoonist Paul Karasik (co-adapter of Paul Auster's City of Glass, and co-author of The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family) has spent years tracking down these obscure and hard to find stories buried in the back of long-forgotten comic book titles. Karasik has also uncovered a dark secret: why Hanks disappeared from the comics scene. This book collects 15 of his best stories in one volume followed by an afterword which solves the mystery of "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks," the mysterious cartoonist who created a hailstorm of tales of brutal retribution...and then mysteriously vanished.
2008 Eisner Award WINNER: Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books
2008 Eisner Award Nominee: Best Short Story, "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks?" by Paul Karasik
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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985 people want to read
About the author
Fletcher Hanks
14 books19 followersFletcher Hanks, Sr. was a cartoonist from the Golden Age of Comic Books, who wrote and drew stories detailing the adventures of all-powerful, supernatural heroes and their elaborate punishments of transgressors. In addition to his birth name, Hanks worked under a number of pen names, including "Hank Christy," "Charles Netcher," "Chris Fletcher", "C. C. Starr," and "Barclay Flagg." Hanks was active in comic books from 1939 to 1941, when he left for reasons still unknown. In those years, he abandoned his wife, Margaret, and his children Douglas, Alma, Fletcher Hanks Jr. and William.
He continued to live in Oxford, Maryland, where he became the president of its town commission in 1958–60. Years later, his body was found on a park bench in Manhattan in 1976; he had frozen to death, penniless and likely drunk.
He continued to live in Oxford, Maryland, where he became the president of its town commission in 1958–60. Years later, his body was found on a park bench in Manhattan in 1976; he had frozen to death, penniless and likely drunk.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
February 7, 2021
Bizarre, hilarious, primitive, poster-colored, cliched, fresh, simple. Done in 1939-1941 in the infancy of superhero comics, much of his work is lost, but here some of it is, strange but rescued from the dust heap of history. Paul Karasik's afterward comic on visiting Fletcher Hanks, Jr. is priceless, and disturbing, and funny. Like many other comic artists such as Art Spiegelman, Seth and Chris Ware, Karasik is sentimental about and appreciative of comic history. Good thing, as now some of these early, sometimes crude and sometimes bizarre comic works are being preserved.
Worth a look, for sure. It's amazing not because it is contemporary proficient but because it exists, because it gives you a sense of history, and shows you some foundations for "outsider" or underground art. The title alone gives you an indication of its character. And of Hanks, none other than Robert Crumb says, "this is one twisted dude." If CRUMB can say that, well, there you go.
Worth a look, for sure. It's amazing not because it is contemporary proficient but because it exists, because it gives you a sense of history, and shows you some foundations for "outsider" or underground art. The title alone gives you an indication of its character. And of Hanks, none other than Robert Crumb says, "this is one twisted dude." If CRUMB can say that, well, there you go.
April 5, 2015
Stardust is the most remarkable man ever! He’s a Super Wizard who flies around the cosmos in a yellow condom but tends to focus his attention towards America! His powers are whatever the story demands!
Fantomah is the most remarkable (Fletcher Hanks loves this word) woman ever! She’s a Jungle Protector who flies around the jungle in a white condom and her powers are whatever the story demands!
There’s also a couple of one-off, remarkable beefcakes called Big Red McLane (he’s a lumberjack and he’s ok…) and Buzz Crandall (note: Crandall is not a good name for anyone, especially superheroes).
This is the work of Fletcher Hanks, an obscure cartoonist who produced these comics from 1939 to 1941 before disappearing.
I like superhero comics but I rarely read beyond the Modern Age and almost never from the Golden because the writing is so, so bad. Hanks’ writing is no exception. The villains are always saying aloud their plans: “We’re out to get the money in all these New York banks, and the jewels in every mansion! We’ll take over all the wealth in the city!”, because that’s how people talked back then.
Really, every panel could be quoted as an example of bad writing, but the plotting is even worse. We are talking insanely simplistic stories where nothing makes sense. Take this Stardust comic: some bad guys are going to stop the motion of the planet which somehow means everyone will float off into space. The bad guys actually manage to do this with what looks like a few globes on a treadmill - AND EVERYONE ON EARTH FLIES OFF INTO SPACE! But not the bad guys who’re tethered to the ground with chains.
Stardust’s powers are never explained, but, like I said before, they are whatever the story demands. You’ll never read more contrived comics than these, I promise you. Stardust uses rays to capture everyone from Earth - who somehow haven’t died in space yet - and take them back to the planet. Then Stardust throws the bad guy into space (he’s killed the other two), and puts him in a floating ice prison in space (it’s just a regular prison with icicles on the outside in space - who built it, why ice?!). Like the dialogue, every plot could be used as an example of how not to write a story.
But I know, these are Golden Age comics and you have to keep in mind that superheroes were a brand new genre. Nobody knew what superhero comics were, nothing was fully defined yet, and so anything was possible. It’s also not clear whether Hanks - who was 52 when he created these comics - was writing down to an audience he believed would be children (the belief that comics are still only for kids persists today), and that’s why he put almost no effort into sensical stories, or whether he was just that bad a writer.
It’s also worth noting that back then creators had to do everything so Hanks literally wrote, pencilled, inked, coloured, and lettered all of his comics. And if his situation was like a lot of comics creators at the time, he usually had to knock these out in a couple days, so didn’t have the luxury of streamlining anything.
That’s why I’ll give this guy a pass on many of the faux pas in the book. That and the fact that I haven’t smiled so much at a superhero comic in some time. They’re so, so stupid, they’re charming in a way, and sometimes very funny. Like in Buzz Crandall where the evil alien, using a couple of levers and dials, is able to make entire planets switch orbit and fly around like a Newton’s cradle!
The art is also really good. There’s a quaintness to them that’s quite wonderful and some of the imagery is quite unnerving like seeing thousands of people lifted off-planet by some invisible force, and the repeated wartime imagery reflects the times in which they were created. I really like Fantomah’s design with her head turning into a human skull when she uses her superpowers. It’s also worth noting that she predates Wonder Woman as a female superhero by a couple years.
By far the best comic is the editor (and a cartoonist in his own right) Paul Karasik’s Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks? afterword that closes out this book. It explains how this book came to be, borne out of Karasik’s fascination with the obscure cartoonist and his desire to put his work out there, though it also sheds some light on Hanks’ real life via his now elderly son, Fletcher Hanks Jr.
Turns out Hanks was a piece of crap. When he wasn’t beating up his wife, he was beating up his kids, all while dead drunk. He even pushed the then five year old Fletcher Hanks Jr down the stairs, just because he was a mean bastard who beat on his family. It’s unclear why he stopped making comics after only a couple of years in 1941, or even what he did for the years after, but he kept drinking and wound up a broke, pathetic drunk, frozen to death on a Manhattan park bench in 1977.
Obviously if you like Golden Age comics, you’ll enjoy this, but for those who don’t, this one isn’t going to convince you that they’re great. The art is fine but the writing is so confoundingly bad it actually makes modern day hacks like Dan Jurgens, Rick Remender, Ann Nocenti and J. Michael Straczynski look good. It makes a nice change of pace from the slick productions of today though, and shows us how things once were, especially if you’re interested in the evolution of the superhero genre. I’ll recommend it as a novelty read more than anything.
Fantomah is the most remarkable (Fletcher Hanks loves this word) woman ever! She’s a Jungle Protector who flies around the jungle in a white condom and her powers are whatever the story demands!
There’s also a couple of one-off, remarkable beefcakes called Big Red McLane (he’s a lumberjack and he’s ok…) and Buzz Crandall (note: Crandall is not a good name for anyone, especially superheroes).
This is the work of Fletcher Hanks, an obscure cartoonist who produced these comics from 1939 to 1941 before disappearing.
I like superhero comics but I rarely read beyond the Modern Age and almost never from the Golden because the writing is so, so bad. Hanks’ writing is no exception. The villains are always saying aloud their plans: “We’re out to get the money in all these New York banks, and the jewels in every mansion! We’ll take over all the wealth in the city!”, because that’s how people talked back then.
Really, every panel could be quoted as an example of bad writing, but the plotting is even worse. We are talking insanely simplistic stories where nothing makes sense. Take this Stardust comic: some bad guys are going to stop the motion of the planet which somehow means everyone will float off into space. The bad guys actually manage to do this with what looks like a few globes on a treadmill - AND EVERYONE ON EARTH FLIES OFF INTO SPACE! But not the bad guys who’re tethered to the ground with chains.
Stardust’s powers are never explained, but, like I said before, they are whatever the story demands. You’ll never read more contrived comics than these, I promise you. Stardust uses rays to capture everyone from Earth - who somehow haven’t died in space yet - and take them back to the planet. Then Stardust throws the bad guy into space (he’s killed the other two), and puts him in a floating ice prison in space (it’s just a regular prison with icicles on the outside in space - who built it, why ice?!). Like the dialogue, every plot could be used as an example of how not to write a story.
But I know, these are Golden Age comics and you have to keep in mind that superheroes were a brand new genre. Nobody knew what superhero comics were, nothing was fully defined yet, and so anything was possible. It’s also not clear whether Hanks - who was 52 when he created these comics - was writing down to an audience he believed would be children (the belief that comics are still only for kids persists today), and that’s why he put almost no effort into sensical stories, or whether he was just that bad a writer.
It’s also worth noting that back then creators had to do everything so Hanks literally wrote, pencilled, inked, coloured, and lettered all of his comics. And if his situation was like a lot of comics creators at the time, he usually had to knock these out in a couple days, so didn’t have the luxury of streamlining anything.
That’s why I’ll give this guy a pass on many of the faux pas in the book. That and the fact that I haven’t smiled so much at a superhero comic in some time. They’re so, so stupid, they’re charming in a way, and sometimes very funny. Like in Buzz Crandall where the evil alien, using a couple of levers and dials, is able to make entire planets switch orbit and fly around like a Newton’s cradle!
The art is also really good. There’s a quaintness to them that’s quite wonderful and some of the imagery is quite unnerving like seeing thousands of people lifted off-planet by some invisible force, and the repeated wartime imagery reflects the times in which they were created. I really like Fantomah’s design with her head turning into a human skull when she uses her superpowers. It’s also worth noting that she predates Wonder Woman as a female superhero by a couple years.
By far the best comic is the editor (and a cartoonist in his own right) Paul Karasik’s Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks? afterword that closes out this book. It explains how this book came to be, borne out of Karasik’s fascination with the obscure cartoonist and his desire to put his work out there, though it also sheds some light on Hanks’ real life via his now elderly son, Fletcher Hanks Jr.
Turns out Hanks was a piece of crap. When he wasn’t beating up his wife, he was beating up his kids, all while dead drunk. He even pushed the then five year old Fletcher Hanks Jr down the stairs, just because he was a mean bastard who beat on his family. It’s unclear why he stopped making comics after only a couple of years in 1941, or even what he did for the years after, but he kept drinking and wound up a broke, pathetic drunk, frozen to death on a Manhattan park bench in 1977.
Obviously if you like Golden Age comics, you’ll enjoy this, but for those who don’t, this one isn’t going to convince you that they’re great. The art is fine but the writing is so confoundingly bad it actually makes modern day hacks like Dan Jurgens, Rick Remender, Ann Nocenti and J. Michael Straczynski look good. It makes a nice change of pace from the slick productions of today though, and shows us how things once were, especially if you’re interested in the evolution of the superhero genre. I’ll recommend it as a novelty read more than anything.
June 6, 2007
Fletcher Hanks has a genuinely odd sensibility, and I can see how his work, to the extent that it's known at all, tends to polarize people.
His drawings are crude and stiff at times, his plots are predictable and ludicrous, and his superheroes are...I mean, they have "super superiority rays," shit like that.
But. There's also a stark beauty to the work. I love the way Hanks will fill up a panel of tiny human bodies being flung around by explosions or suspension rays or whatever.
And while his superheroes don't make a lot of sense, they are genuinely unique. Like Fantomah, a blonde bombshell who protects the jungle by transforming into a female version of Skeletor. Also, she wears a negligee.
All of Hanks's work is completely surreal and reading it is a complete immersion into a world that has very little bearing on reality (ie even the Golden Age Superman was influenced by global events, often fighting Hitler and Stalin). Here, I felt as if I was locked in Hanks's drunkass head.
Which apparently he was, most of the time. The afterword to this collection is a heartbreaker.
His drawings are crude and stiff at times, his plots are predictable and ludicrous, and his superheroes are...I mean, they have "super superiority rays," shit like that.
But. There's also a stark beauty to the work. I love the way Hanks will fill up a panel of tiny human bodies being flung around by explosions or suspension rays or whatever.
And while his superheroes don't make a lot of sense, they are genuinely unique. Like Fantomah, a blonde bombshell who protects the jungle by transforming into a female version of Skeletor. Also, she wears a negligee.
All of Hanks's work is completely surreal and reading it is a complete immersion into a world that has very little bearing on reality (ie even the Golden Age Superman was influenced by global events, often fighting Hitler and Stalin). Here, I felt as if I was locked in Hanks's drunkass head.
Which apparently he was, most of the time. The afterword to this collection is a heartbreaker.
January 24, 2024
Think the Ed Wood of comics and you are there! This stuff is so bad it is good! Some of the stories just don't make sense; Fletcher Hanks seems to jump from one point in the story to the next - often at the cost of any semblance of continuity! The 'punishments' in the stories are bizarre and cruel; often like something someone on LSD would agree with. A singular comic experience!
April 18, 2013
I think Robert Crumb says it best: "Fletcher Hanks was a twisted dude." This stuff is absolutely amazing. While Fletcher Hanks only did comics from 1939-1941 and wrote pretty standard super-hero type storylines, they are of such bizarro quality that I'm mesmerized by the sheer weirdness of it all.
Hanks' heroes are nearly omnipotent--
and
But as far as powers go, they sort of just have whatever amazing power pops into Hanks' head at the time, it seems, like turning people into rats or icicles, or growing and shrinking rays.
What really impresses me, though, are the ways they mete out their punishments. Stardust reduces a villain to just a head, picks it up and throws it into space! Fantomah transforms a pair of thieves into lizard-like freaks and sends them back home to live as outcasts! ("You have defiled the jungle's sacred city, so you shall fly back to your own land as objects of disgrace!" As they fly back home they lament, "Crime doesn't seem to pay!"). These aren't typical punishments. They are almost biblical, as if dealt from a wrathful Old Testament God.
The villains are pretty terrible and weird, too, Take "Mastermind" Destructo, who's basically a mobster, for example…
See? This stuff is nuts.
Funny thing is, even though these read like superhero parodies, they are not. Nor are they sincere but awkward attempts at serious stories, a la Ed Wood. No, I think Fletcher Hanks, being a drunk and abusive husband and father, was just trying to churn out stories to earn money for his next bottle of hooch. In doing so he let his id run wild and we get a glimpse of a mind whose rage and self-loathing manifest through bizarre stories of catastrophic plots foiled by godlike heroes.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Whatever the case, these stories are a hoot. Paul Karasik has done a service to comics fans for assembling them here.
Hanks' heroes are nearly omnipotent--
Stardust, the scientific marvel whose vast knowledge of all planets has made him the most remarkable person ever known, is devoting his abilities to crime-busting.
and
Fantomah, the most remarkable woman ever known, has such keen insight that she can see and know all that happens in the jungle. She devotes her strange powers to protecting the creatures of Jungleland.
But as far as powers go, they sort of just have whatever amazing power pops into Hanks' head at the time, it seems, like turning people into rats or icicles, or growing and shrinking rays.
What really impresses me, though, are the ways they mete out their punishments. Stardust reduces a villain to just a head, picks it up and throws it into space! Fantomah transforms a pair of thieves into lizard-like freaks and sends them back home to live as outcasts! ("You have defiled the jungle's sacred city, so you shall fly back to your own land as objects of disgrace!" As they fly back home they lament, "Crime doesn't seem to pay!"). These aren't typical punishments. They are almost biblical, as if dealt from a wrathful Old Testament God.
The villains are pretty terrible and weird, too, Take "Mastermind" Destructo, who's basically a mobster, for example…
My oxygen-destroying ray is perfected, and we're ready to make the set-up for its use! We'll distribute the ray in an inactive state, and then I'll release the ray action by radio control from a central point! Every big shot in America is to die by suffocation, all at the same time! When they're out of the way, we grab control of everything!
See? This stuff is nuts.
Funny thing is, even though these read like superhero parodies, they are not. Nor are they sincere but awkward attempts at serious stories, a la Ed Wood. No, I think Fletcher Hanks, being a drunk and abusive husband and father, was just trying to churn out stories to earn money for his next bottle of hooch. In doing so he let his id run wild and we get a glimpse of a mind whose rage and self-loathing manifest through bizarre stories of catastrophic plots foiled by godlike heroes.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Whatever the case, these stories are a hoot. Paul Karasik has done a service to comics fans for assembling them here.
January 14, 2011
It seems every goodreads review of this book is based on the Amazon product description. Something about crude art and storylines but interesting and weird blah blah. Come on, really? Crude compared to what? Ever read any pre-war Green Lantern? Same crude art and storylines but those writers and artists are revered in the comics world now. Weird? Well I suppose a super-powered person from another planet that travels to Earth and then apprehends criminals is a little weird yeah, but then that's the premise of Superman too. Hanks' artworks is actually pretty nice, but while it can be very vibrant (especially considering the medium) it's somehow simultaneously cold and lifeless. The "weird" part of Hanks' comics is that while most mainstream superheroes catch a criminal and throw them in jail only to have them escape, the criminals inhabiting Hanks' Earth are punished with a sort of 'eye for an eye' principal, often being given life sentences or the death penalty. His comics, if anything, are artistically harsh, both in the narrative and visual senses. Fans of superhero comics, or any comics really, should not turn this collection away.
November 10, 2008
I don't know exactly why I was so fascinated by this collection of previously unnoticed pre-WW II comics. They're crude and raw. And Karasik finds out in his comic book afterword that Hanks was a cruel and abusive alcoholic. Maybe it's the bizarre and convoluted punishments Hanks's superheroes deliver to the bad guys. How about Stardust using a "superiority beam" to enlarge the villain's head to the point where it absorbs his body, then transporting that head to the "space pocket of living death" where a "giant headhunter" absorbs the head into his body? Or maybe it's just the general weirdness of the heroes themselves. "Fantomah, the most marvelous woman ever known, has such remarkable insight that she can see all all that ever happens in Jungleland." Fantomah's a curvy blonde whose outfit is curiously close to a negligee. However, when she's on a mission her rage causes her to change form and become someone who resembles the Grim Reaper. At any rate this was a rich source of guilty pleasure for me. Probably not for everyone, though.
April 6, 2016
What an undiscovered genius.
January 9, 2008
If there's one thing I truly love, it's strange shit, and this volume is a cornucopia of balls-out, nonsensical four-color madness. Golden Age cartoonist Fletcher Hanks is a name long relegated to the murky mists of comics history obscurity, but now his completely insane works have been unearthed and laid out for your jaw-dropping edification. The guy's stuff brings to mind a creative gene-splicing of Basil Wolverton and Ed Wood, so stop and think about that one for a minute.
According to his son, Fletcher Hanks Jr., the senior Hanks was an abusive alcoholic, an aspect that I suspect may have had great influence on his comic book creations, because no sane mind could have come up with his stuff if and have it be taken as non-parody. Hanks' career lasted for about three years (1939-1941), and during that time he unleashed some of the most lysergic creations ever to grace a page, chief among which was Stardust the Super Wizard, a huge, impossibly buff alien hero who looks like an overgrown gay dude in a fabulous blue leotard.
In his initial appearance, the Earth picks up a transmission from space alerting the world to the impending arrival of Stardust, prompting a bad guy to say to his fellows, "Listen to this, you mugs! Stardust is coming to the Earth! He's the super crime wiz who is busting spy mobs on a lot of planets! Boy, will he have our necks!!" And he ain't kidding; Stardust is loaded with bitchin' superpowers, or as the text descries him, "His scientific use of rays has made him master of space and planetary forces — the gas of a certain star has made him immune to heat or cold — Stardust carries artificial lungs that enable him to breathe safely under any cndition — he uses new spectral rays that can make him invisible , or as bright as the sun — he wears a flexible star-metal skin controlled through rays from a dsitant sun and rendering him indestructible by chemicals, or by electrical or violent force." And as if that wasn't enough, the fucking guy can fly at super-luminal speeds, control people's minds, manipulate gravity at his slightest whim, wield a magnetic ray and a "boomerang" ray, cause the skeletons of criminals' victims to appear and torment their murderers (again thanks to a special ray), can transform men into icicles that melt away, can return the entire population of the world to their exact original locations when crooks stop the Earth's rotation and cause everyone to hang suspended into outer space — I swear to God I'm not making any of this up — and in one memorable instance turns oddly-named fifth columnist "Yew Bee" into a rat with a human head.
All of that stuff happens in the first two eight-page stories, for fuck's sake!
The completely one-sided adventures of Stardust occupy much of the book, along with Big Red McLane, a lumberjack who spends five pages violently beating the living shit of enemy loggers before the story comes to a jarringly abrupt halt, and an adventure of Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol that may be the single worst space opera in the history of the medium. But the rest of the book is filled out with several chapters from the exploits of Fantomah, hands-down the weirdest jungle heroine of all time.
There's no suspense to any of these stories since Hanks loads the heroes with abilities that make them pretty much gods, but the fun lies in seeing just how outrageous the stories get, each panel being more crazily absurd than the one preceding it. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!!
According to his son, Fletcher Hanks Jr., the senior Hanks was an abusive alcoholic, an aspect that I suspect may have had great influence on his comic book creations, because no sane mind could have come up with his stuff if and have it be taken as non-parody. Hanks' career lasted for about three years (1939-1941), and during that time he unleashed some of the most lysergic creations ever to grace a page, chief among which was Stardust the Super Wizard, a huge, impossibly buff alien hero who looks like an overgrown gay dude in a fabulous blue leotard.
In his initial appearance, the Earth picks up a transmission from space alerting the world to the impending arrival of Stardust, prompting a bad guy to say to his fellows, "Listen to this, you mugs! Stardust is coming to the Earth! He's the super crime wiz who is busting spy mobs on a lot of planets! Boy, will he have our necks!!" And he ain't kidding; Stardust is loaded with bitchin' superpowers, or as the text descries him, "His scientific use of rays has made him master of space and planetary forces — the gas of a certain star has made him immune to heat or cold — Stardust carries artificial lungs that enable him to breathe safely under any cndition — he uses new spectral rays that can make him invisible , or as bright as the sun — he wears a flexible star-metal skin controlled through rays from a dsitant sun and rendering him indestructible by chemicals, or by electrical or violent force." And as if that wasn't enough, the fucking guy can fly at super-luminal speeds, control people's minds, manipulate gravity at his slightest whim, wield a magnetic ray and a "boomerang" ray, cause the skeletons of criminals' victims to appear and torment their murderers (again thanks to a special ray), can transform men into icicles that melt away, can return the entire population of the world to their exact original locations when crooks stop the Earth's rotation and cause everyone to hang suspended into outer space — I swear to God I'm not making any of this up — and in one memorable instance turns oddly-named fifth columnist "Yew Bee" into a rat with a human head.
All of that stuff happens in the first two eight-page stories, for fuck's sake!
The completely one-sided adventures of Stardust occupy much of the book, along with Big Red McLane, a lumberjack who spends five pages violently beating the living shit of enemy loggers before the story comes to a jarringly abrupt halt, and an adventure of Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol that may be the single worst space opera in the history of the medium. But the rest of the book is filled out with several chapters from the exploits of Fantomah, hands-down the weirdest jungle heroine of all time.
There's no suspense to any of these stories since Hanks loads the heroes with abilities that make them pretty much gods, but the fun lies in seeing just how outrageous the stories get, each panel being more crazily absurd than the one preceding it. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!!
September 8, 2014
"Fletcher Hanks fue un tipo retorcido" dijo Robert Crumb.
Yo me arriesgaría a agregar "Un reverendo sorete. Un hijo de puta borracho que le partió la quijada a la mujer, tiró a su hijo de cuatro años por la escalera de una patada, unos años después le afanó el chanchito de los ahorros (que el chico había juntado arreglando redes de pesca y vendiendo verduras) para rajarse de la casa, desentenderse por completo de sus cuatro hijos y nunca más volver". Una de esas pocas personas con las que me dan ganas de aplicar el "diente por diente" y que me despiertan el odio desmesurado que justifica cualquier barbaridad, al punto de pensar "Ay, ¿en serio se murió congelado en un banco de plaza en la más absoluta pobreza y sin nadie que lo llorara? Bien merecido lo tenía, basura infrahumana."
En (cierta) sintonía con su nada apreciable persona, tenemos a Stardust: el Súper Hechicero, uno de sus personajes más emblemáticos. Stardust es uno de los trasuntos supermanianos más grotescos, ridículos, cuadrados y, no puedo evitar sentir cierta culpa al decirlo, condenadamente divertidos que haya leído. Se supone que, gracias a que estudió todas las artes y ciencias de todas las galaxias, es el hombre más inteligente y capaz del Universo, aunque su manera de acercarse a un mundo ideal es detener a los malvados con castigos crueles, desproporcionados y completamente desaforados y con una leve cuota de burda poesía. Mantiene siempre el status quo y hace una clara apología de la supuesta superioridad absoluta del Primer Mundo, encarnando en los wasposos Estados Unidos de América todas las virtudes humanas, frente al resto del mediocre y anónimo planeta Tierra.
Fantomah: la Misteriosa Mujer de la Jungla, será un poco más moderada a la hora de castigar malhechores pero no se queda atrás en cuanto a personaje con poderes rebuscados hasta el ridículo, que en cada historia dejaba mensajes racistas y ariocentristas. Big Red McLane: el Rey de los Bosques Nórdicos, y Buzz Randall de la Patrulla Especial, sí que son bastante pedorros y no en el buen sentido, pero metele que también tienen su cuota de gracia y encanto naif.
La cuestión es que me vi completamente embobado por las historias inclasificables e irrepetibles de este infame creador pasajero que se cagó en todo y en todos por un lado, cumplió su sueño de la infancia de vivir de dibujar por un par de años por otro; y murió en el más que justo olvido y en la más que merecida miseria para quedarse pudriéndose ahí solito durante un buen par de décadas.
Hasta que ojos curiosos, (primero los de Art Spiegelman y cía, después los de Paul Karasik) lo levantaron de su tumba cual esqueleto de víctima de la mafia, nos trajeron sus historias a unos cuantos curiosos ignorantes, y nos llenaron de gozo culposo al hacernos conocer la impresionante obra historietil de este prócer de la historia de la escatología humana.
Yo me arriesgaría a agregar "Un reverendo sorete. Un hijo de puta borracho que le partió la quijada a la mujer, tiró a su hijo de cuatro años por la escalera de una patada, unos años después le afanó el chanchito de los ahorros (que el chico había juntado arreglando redes de pesca y vendiendo verduras) para rajarse de la casa, desentenderse por completo de sus cuatro hijos y nunca más volver". Una de esas pocas personas con las que me dan ganas de aplicar el "diente por diente" y que me despiertan el odio desmesurado que justifica cualquier barbaridad, al punto de pensar "Ay, ¿en serio se murió congelado en un banco de plaza en la más absoluta pobreza y sin nadie que lo llorara? Bien merecido lo tenía, basura infrahumana."
En (cierta) sintonía con su nada apreciable persona, tenemos a Stardust: el Súper Hechicero, uno de sus personajes más emblemáticos. Stardust es uno de los trasuntos supermanianos más grotescos, ridículos, cuadrados y, no puedo evitar sentir cierta culpa al decirlo, condenadamente divertidos que haya leído. Se supone que, gracias a que estudió todas las artes y ciencias de todas las galaxias, es el hombre más inteligente y capaz del Universo, aunque su manera de acercarse a un mundo ideal es detener a los malvados con castigos crueles, desproporcionados y completamente desaforados y con una leve cuota de burda poesía. Mantiene siempre el status quo y hace una clara apología de la supuesta superioridad absoluta del Primer Mundo, encarnando en los wasposos Estados Unidos de América todas las virtudes humanas, frente al resto del mediocre y anónimo planeta Tierra.
Fantomah: la Misteriosa Mujer de la Jungla, será un poco más moderada a la hora de castigar malhechores pero no se queda atrás en cuanto a personaje con poderes rebuscados hasta el ridículo, que en cada historia dejaba mensajes racistas y ariocentristas. Big Red McLane: el Rey de los Bosques Nórdicos, y Buzz Randall de la Patrulla Especial, sí que son bastante pedorros y no en el buen sentido, pero metele que también tienen su cuota de gracia y encanto naif.
La cuestión es que me vi completamente embobado por las historias inclasificables e irrepetibles de este infame creador pasajero que se cagó en todo y en todos por un lado, cumplió su sueño de la infancia de vivir de dibujar por un par de años por otro; y murió en el más que justo olvido y en la más que merecida miseria para quedarse pudriéndose ahí solito durante un buen par de décadas.
Hasta que ojos curiosos, (primero los de Art Spiegelman y cía, después los de Paul Karasik) lo levantaron de su tumba cual esqueleto de víctima de la mafia, nos trajeron sus historias a unos cuantos curiosos ignorantes, y nos llenaron de gozo culposo al hacernos conocer la impresionante obra historietil de este prócer de la historia de la escatología humana.
April 22, 2008
Imagine, if you will, Ogden Whitney not knowing his Herbie Popnecker, aka “Herbie the Fat Fury” had no idea his creation was abstract and absurdist and you know a bit of what you’re in for when you crack the cover of this forgotten gem. A collection of disturbingly, unintentionally deranged comic stories by forgotten forties comic artist Fletcher Hanks. Fletcher’s hero “Stardust” may be the most unintentionally hysterically cruel heroes of the golden age of comics. Stardust’s “I don’t kill, I just leave you somewhere to die in agony” mentality is mind boggling. A lot of people talk about what a bad artist he was, and I completely disagree. His work is wonderfully abstract, in a Basil Wolverton sense. He obviously had no formal training, but that makes his work all the more interesting. It’s awkward, weird and just a monkey ball of visual fun. In my opinion, that’s great art and a completely unique experience.
February 24, 2008
What a crazy weird world Fletcher Hanks head is! "Slightly" off superhero comics that destroys cities (NYC?) and almost an old bible like revenage on the living as well on the villians. On one level it is very disturbing work, yet on another, the comic medium is such a great and weird artform. I love this book because it's really strange and mysterious. Also the last chapter is quite amazing in itself as well.
July 18, 2024
Reflecting the feverish mind of its less than well-adjusted author, this collection holds in its covers some of the most insane, deranged, plain nonsense I've ever read. The art is atrocious, the plot disjointed, the main character so overpowered and perfect (as in, what author thinks is perfect) that there can be no tension or growth, and the morals and lessons are dubious at best. That it could survive the test of time at all - be preserved for modern people to witness - is a minor miracle in itself.
There's some value in it if you're looking for something campy, something so bad that it winds back up to being kind of good, like the Star Wars prequels... but even then it won't entertain you all too long, because of its greatest sin: it's repetitive. Once you've read one story of Stardust foiling some weird crooks and punishing them in a disproportionate manner straight out of Fletcher Hanks the Elder's wildest power fantasies, you've read them all. Before long it will bore the best of us.
Read the first few pages, then skip to the end for the documentary section. The rest in the middle has very little of value in it.
There's some value in it if you're looking for something campy, something so bad that it winds back up to being kind of good, like the Star Wars prequels... but even then it won't entertain you all too long, because of its greatest sin: it's repetitive. Once you've read one story of Stardust foiling some weird crooks and punishing them in a disproportionate manner straight out of Fletcher Hanks the Elder's wildest power fantasies, you've read them all. Before long it will bore the best of us.
Read the first few pages, then skip to the end for the documentary section. The rest in the middle has very little of value in it.
March 10, 2020
They are strange and fascinating, but in the end, the stories are all the same.
I liked the American Splendor style autobiographical story at the end, where the fan collector meets the cartoonist's son.
I liked the American Splendor style autobiographical story at the end, where the fan collector meets the cartoonist's son.
November 22, 2007
Stardust the Super Wizard.
Hanks was a creator during the Golden Age of comics, when everyone was trying to create their Superman. A time when no one really knew what the #$@! they were doing, but that was the beauty of it. No rules had been established. You made it up as you went along. And that's exactly how this book reads, as if Hanks was just making it up from panel to panel.
This stuff is absolutely off the wall!! A surrealistic work of genius.
December 3, 2007
These are from the 30's; deformed, beefy male and female "heroes" exact unneccesarily mean, often-times pre-emptive punishments on even uglier villains. The woman can change her face into a skull, and the man is named 'Star-Dust, most interesting man alive.' He has a disgusting baby's head and pointed toes.
August 11, 2016
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Here's a book that grabs you and shakes you !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
A book that makes you go What The F$£% at least 60 times !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Never in your life have you seen such a combination of psychedelic, happy, sad, good, bad, rock'em, sock'em action !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
A book that makes you wonder about the sanity of Fletcher Hanks, because never has there been a comic book like this !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring The Super Wizard STARDUST! whose vast knowledge of interplanetary science has made him the most remarkable man that has ever lived! STARDUST devotes his abilities to crime-busting and ass-kicking, torturing and transforming villains into rats ! For some odd reason, despite being an interstellar cop, STARDUST only seems interested in fighting crime in New York! But hey, we love him !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring FANTOMAH! Mystery Woman of the jungle! The most remarkable woman that ever lived! FANTOMAH devotes her phenomenal powers to protecting the jungle-born! FANTOMAH has such keen insight that she can see all that happens in connection with the jungle! FANTOMAH uses her wizardry to protect the welfare of jungle creatures! For some peculiar reason, FANTOMAH never interferes with the villains while they decimate entire populations; she enjoys taking her sweet time playing Voyeur before she appears out of nowhere to avenge the people she could have saved in the first place! Ah, what would we do without FANTOMAH ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring BIG RED McLANE! King of the Northwoods and loyal lumberjack for the great BEND Company! Isn't he a true sweetheart ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring BUZZ CRANDALL! of the space patrol! BUZZ CRANDALL lives on the highly civilized planet of venus, and is in charge of the inter-planetary secret service for both Venus and the Earth! BUZZ CRANDALL has become the top crime-buster of the Universe! Don't you just LOVE that blue suit ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
With heinous villains that will give you the whim-whams, and weirdos! With Magnetic rays, and oddballs! With anti-gravity rays, and weird-looking human beings! With fist-fights, planets heading for each other, and some pretty unusual stuff !!!!!
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
The comic book equivalent of an Ed Wood movie !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Never has Subversive literature been so APPALLING and EPIC !
Here's a book that grabs you and shakes you !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
A book that makes you go What The F$£% at least 60 times !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Never in your life have you seen such a combination of psychedelic, happy, sad, good, bad, rock'em, sock'em action !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
A book that makes you wonder about the sanity of Fletcher Hanks, because never has there been a comic book like this !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring The Super Wizard STARDUST! whose vast knowledge of interplanetary science has made him the most remarkable man that has ever lived! STARDUST devotes his abilities to crime-busting and ass-kicking, torturing and transforming villains into rats ! For some odd reason, despite being an interstellar cop, STARDUST only seems interested in fighting crime in New York! But hey, we love him !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring FANTOMAH! Mystery Woman of the jungle! The most remarkable woman that ever lived! FANTOMAH devotes her phenomenal powers to protecting the jungle-born! FANTOMAH has such keen insight that she can see all that happens in connection with the jungle! FANTOMAH uses her wizardry to protect the welfare of jungle creatures! For some peculiar reason, FANTOMAH never interferes with the villains while they decimate entire populations; she enjoys taking her sweet time playing Voyeur before she appears out of nowhere to avenge the people she could have saved in the first place! Ah, what would we do without FANTOMAH ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring BIG RED McLANE! King of the Northwoods and loyal lumberjack for the great BEND Company! Isn't he a true sweetheart ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Featuring BUZZ CRANDALL! of the space patrol! BUZZ CRANDALL lives on the highly civilized planet of venus, and is in charge of the inter-planetary secret service for both Venus and the Earth! BUZZ CRANDALL has become the top crime-buster of the Universe! Don't you just LOVE that blue suit ?
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
With heinous villains that will give you the whim-whams, and weirdos! With Magnetic rays, and oddballs! With anti-gravity rays, and weird-looking human beings! With fist-fights, planets heading for each other, and some pretty unusual stuff !!!!!
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
The comic book equivalent of an Ed Wood movie !
I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets !
Never has Subversive literature been so APPALLING and EPIC !
October 21, 2008
The world of comics was radically different in 1939. No single artist proves this dictum than the largely-forgotten Fletcher Hanks. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, the first collection of Hanks' work, introduces a new generation to this artist's strange works.
Soon after the April, 1938 introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, new publishers sprang up and needed content for the suddenly-popular comic books. Almost anyone who could draw landed a job in the burgeoning industry. During this mad scramble Fletcher Hanks, who obviously understood little about anatomy, began publishing stories in a variety of obscure publications such as Fantastic, Jungle, Fight, and Big Three Comics.
Hanks' fantastic stories usually feature the intergalactic protector Stardust or Fantomah, mysterious woman of the jungle. Both beings meted out justice and vengeance upon the guilty like some cosmically-powered Shadow, though these heroes went far beyond the punishments of that legendary cloaked avenger. Villains are frozen in space, dissected, poisoned, and transmogrified. The penalties inflicted matched the heinous and creative crimes committed, usually mass murder of millions for greed, by a variety of methods such as stopping the Earth's rotation, tsunami, suffocation, huge spiders, and "giant flaming hands." Each story in this collection concludes with some uniquely horrific act.
Of the fifteen Hanks stories, all but two feature both heroes. One starred Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods, a lumberjack who defends loggers against the marauding Red River Boys. The other showcases the Venusian Interplanetary Secret Service agent Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol as he struggles against the evil in the universe.
Often crude but always dynamic, Fletcher Hanks' art recalls his better known contemporary Basil Wolverton. Hanks' career spanned just three years, 1939-1941, after which he disappeared into obscurity.
Paul Karasik's illustrated afterword grants an inside look into the life of the mysterious Hanks. Karasik tracks down Fletcher Hanks, Jr. and uncovers some disturbing and fascinating information about the elder Hanks.
Complete with color-corrected art, this lush production falters only in the lack of background information about the stories and the artist himself. A fascinating and somewhat outlandish collection, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! rescues Fletcher Hanks from the purgatory of forgotten creators and restores his rightful place among the pantheon of the bizarre.
(The review originally appeared on RevolutionSF.)
Link:http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.p...
Soon after the April, 1938 introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, new publishers sprang up and needed content for the suddenly-popular comic books. Almost anyone who could draw landed a job in the burgeoning industry. During this mad scramble Fletcher Hanks, who obviously understood little about anatomy, began publishing stories in a variety of obscure publications such as Fantastic, Jungle, Fight, and Big Three Comics.
Hanks' fantastic stories usually feature the intergalactic protector Stardust or Fantomah, mysterious woman of the jungle. Both beings meted out justice and vengeance upon the guilty like some cosmically-powered Shadow, though these heroes went far beyond the punishments of that legendary cloaked avenger. Villains are frozen in space, dissected, poisoned, and transmogrified. The penalties inflicted matched the heinous and creative crimes committed, usually mass murder of millions for greed, by a variety of methods such as stopping the Earth's rotation, tsunami, suffocation, huge spiders, and "giant flaming hands." Each story in this collection concludes with some uniquely horrific act.
Of the fifteen Hanks stories, all but two feature both heroes. One starred Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods, a lumberjack who defends loggers against the marauding Red River Boys. The other showcases the Venusian Interplanetary Secret Service agent Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol as he struggles against the evil in the universe.
Often crude but always dynamic, Fletcher Hanks' art recalls his better known contemporary Basil Wolverton. Hanks' career spanned just three years, 1939-1941, after which he disappeared into obscurity.
Paul Karasik's illustrated afterword grants an inside look into the life of the mysterious Hanks. Karasik tracks down Fletcher Hanks, Jr. and uncovers some disturbing and fascinating information about the elder Hanks.
Complete with color-corrected art, this lush production falters only in the lack of background information about the stories and the artist himself. A fascinating and somewhat outlandish collection, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! rescues Fletcher Hanks from the purgatory of forgotten creators and restores his rightful place among the pantheon of the bizarre.
(The review originally appeared on RevolutionSF.)
Link:http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.p...
January 22, 2014
Fletcher Hanks was to comics as Ed Wood was to movies. To simply call them "bad" is to miss the point. Hanks pulls off some breathtaking leaps of story logic with ease. The art is crude, combining the worst qualities of Basil Wolverton and Joe Schuster, but with a certain crude power that's magnificent to behold. I seriously want the panel from which the title comes blown up on a T-shirt.
February 14, 2008
This books is demented. Picked this up on a whim cause I liked the printing, but found myself fascinated by the bizzare stories and the afterward, in which the compiler/editor adds his own strangely touching comic about his discovery of these neglected works.
December 1, 2017
Pure, golden age surrealism! Deceptively simple but utterly strange! OK, I'll admit, this is a guilty pleasure.
July 17, 2013
Comic writer and historian Paul Karasik has said that ," Hanks worked on second-rate characters for third-rater publishers." Keep in mind that Karasik is also the man who who has seen all of Fletcher Hanks' known work back into publication, and who at other times refers to him as a genius. We are dealing here with an interesting case.
Hanks' comics appeared between 1939 and 1941. His two principle characters were The Super Wizard Stardust and Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle. Both are great protectors of mankind, although Stardust sees the entire galaxy has his domain whereas Fantomah protects Jungleland. (Jungland? Prepare for some eye rolling as you read these comics.) Hanks wrote at a time when the comics industry would have had little working knowledge of space science and even less concern with it. His default plot device is an assortment of powerful rays -- thought waves, anti-gravity rays, the boomerang ray, attractor beams, or, when in a bind, the generic secret ray. That is just a sampling.
Stardust looks like Buster Crabbe, if Crabbe was about seven or eight feet tall. Fantomah is a beautiful blonde in a one piece black swim suit sporting a transparent skirt. But don't make her mad. Angered, she transforms into a skull-faced avenger. Hank's drawing is serviceable and his compositions are uninspired beyond their ability to progress the absurd plots. When Stardust flies through space in his super-accelerated light waves, deep space contains a haphazard scattering of blobby five-pointed stars that look like those drawn by a bored eight-year old on his school books. The most remarkable visual aspect is the color, with panels filled with saturated red or yellow backgrounds. But would Hanks have done his own coloring? Also, these new Fantagraphics editions almost certainly make the work look better than ever before.
What compels in these narratives is the vision of a world under constant threat by fiendish super criminal syndicates, spy rings, terrorists, and fifth columnists. Stardust saves the day, but not before considerable havoc has been wreaked. Bombs or the villains secret weapons destroy cities, killing thousands, or sending the entire population into space by stopping the earth's rotation. (Stardust gets them back down.) Then Stardust or Fantomah must mete out justice, Minions might be turned over to the law, but for the kingpins, Hanks allows his superheroes a Dantesque imagination when it comes to the proper punishment. These harsh denouements give the stories their crude power.
Karasik's afterwards comes in the form of another comic, drawn in dark ink washes. (What follows could be considered spoiler material.) He discovers Fletcher Hanks' work, then through Google finds that a Fletcher Hanks who flew dangerous missions in WW II is still alive and living nearby. He makes an appointment to meet Hanks, but the ninety-year-old man who answers the door is Hanks, Jr. He knew his father liked to draw and was something of an artist, but had no idea he ever published what he calls "funny books." Hanks, Jr., hated his alcoholic father, who beat him, his mother, and his sister. They were glad when he deserted the family around 1930. There was little contact after that. He learned years after the fact that New York City police had found his father frozen to death on a park bench in the 1970's.
This squalid backstory returned me to the comics. You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to see layers of self-hatred in the draconian sense of justice that fuels Hanks' work. But there is also no reason to reduce them to case studies and ignore their crude vision of a dangerous, violent world that can only be redeemed by superhuman means.
Hanks' comics appeared between 1939 and 1941. His two principle characters were The Super Wizard Stardust and Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle. Both are great protectors of mankind, although Stardust sees the entire galaxy has his domain whereas Fantomah protects Jungleland. (Jungland? Prepare for some eye rolling as you read these comics.) Hanks wrote at a time when the comics industry would have had little working knowledge of space science and even less concern with it. His default plot device is an assortment of powerful rays -- thought waves, anti-gravity rays, the boomerang ray, attractor beams, or, when in a bind, the generic secret ray. That is just a sampling.
Stardust looks like Buster Crabbe, if Crabbe was about seven or eight feet tall. Fantomah is a beautiful blonde in a one piece black swim suit sporting a transparent skirt. But don't make her mad. Angered, she transforms into a skull-faced avenger. Hank's drawing is serviceable and his compositions are uninspired beyond their ability to progress the absurd plots. When Stardust flies through space in his super-accelerated light waves, deep space contains a haphazard scattering of blobby five-pointed stars that look like those drawn by a bored eight-year old on his school books. The most remarkable visual aspect is the color, with panels filled with saturated red or yellow backgrounds. But would Hanks have done his own coloring? Also, these new Fantagraphics editions almost certainly make the work look better than ever before.
What compels in these narratives is the vision of a world under constant threat by fiendish super criminal syndicates, spy rings, terrorists, and fifth columnists. Stardust saves the day, but not before considerable havoc has been wreaked. Bombs or the villains secret weapons destroy cities, killing thousands, or sending the entire population into space by stopping the earth's rotation. (Stardust gets them back down.) Then Stardust or Fantomah must mete out justice, Minions might be turned over to the law, but for the kingpins, Hanks allows his superheroes a Dantesque imagination when it comes to the proper punishment. These harsh denouements give the stories their crude power.
Karasik's afterwards comes in the form of another comic, drawn in dark ink washes. (What follows could be considered spoiler material.) He discovers Fletcher Hanks' work, then through Google finds that a Fletcher Hanks who flew dangerous missions in WW II is still alive and living nearby. He makes an appointment to meet Hanks, but the ninety-year-old man who answers the door is Hanks, Jr. He knew his father liked to draw and was something of an artist, but had no idea he ever published what he calls "funny books." Hanks, Jr., hated his alcoholic father, who beat him, his mother, and his sister. They were glad when he deserted the family around 1930. There was little contact after that. He learned years after the fact that New York City police had found his father frozen to death on a park bench in the 1970's.
This squalid backstory returned me to the comics. You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to see layers of self-hatred in the draconian sense of justice that fuels Hanks' work. But there is also no reason to reduce them to case studies and ignore their crude vision of a dangerous, violent world that can only be redeemed by superhuman means.
January 24, 2009
This book is wild. Short comics from a guy named Fletcher Hanks who was writing back in the 30s. The plots are formulaic and get kind of annoying in that they are SO similar, after a while, BUT the crazy makes up for it. Instead of people learning lessons or simply being punished for their evil doings right before they screw everything up big time.... the bad guys usually wipe out massive amounts of people, like, say...the whole city of new york, before Hanks' wild hero, Stardust (who lives on a PRIVATE STAR with a crime-detecting laboratory...that for some reason is so far away that even at the speed of light it takes him so long to get to Earth that most of the evil deeds are done by the time he gets here), shows up and kills the villain in some bizarre way, like shrinking their body down until it disappears and they are just a head, then taking the head into deep space (by using his tubular spacial, his 'pathway' through space that presumably has air or something in it so he can survive while flying through space) and hurling it into the space pocket of living death where a giant headless body that is hairless from the waist up, but apparently werewolf-like hairy from the waist down, grabs it and shoves the whole head down into his body.... oh, and this guy's name was Destructo, before Stardust stops his evil plot to take over the finances of the US by deploying his oxygen-destroying ray in small vials that are all to be activated simultaneously. Stardust saves the day but not until AFTER the oxygen destroying ray is activated and a bunch of people suffocate. good shit.
His other hero is Fantomah who is a crazy hot jungle babe who rips her face off to reveal a demon-skeleton face and she has some weird semi-uncomfortable paternalistic mental connection with 'the jungle people' (she is white) and saves their quaint ways of life repeatedly.
seriously, this shit is SWEET. typing it out makes it seem even more crazy. The art is AWESOME and i love it and the coloring is like 4-color, so super bright and crazy looking.
His other hero is Fantomah who is a crazy hot jungle babe who rips her face off to reveal a demon-skeleton face and she has some weird semi-uncomfortable paternalistic mental connection with 'the jungle people' (she is white) and saves their quaint ways of life repeatedly.
seriously, this shit is SWEET. typing it out makes it seem even more crazy. The art is AWESOME and i love it and the coloring is like 4-color, so super bright and crazy looking.
July 7, 2013
Imagine a artistic talent in the vein of Carl Burgos or Bill Everett as a, perhaps, bullied 10-year-old with an unbridled imagination and you would probably still not even come close to the the comics of Fletcher Hanks. This is the first volume to collect a large portion of Hanks' vividly illustrated revenge fantasies. The targets of his vindictive ire are generally criminals, frequently Communists, Fifth Columnists and, occasionally, thinly veiled ethnic European-American stereotypes. His superheroes are less compassionate than their contemporaries in the more popular comics of the period. While Superman strove for "truth, justice and the American Way" by bringing criminals to authorities to mete out justice, Hanks' Stardust (The Super Wizard), another all-powerful denizen of a far-off star, is judge, jury and, often, executioner though he seems to prefer to hand out some of the most twisted and grisly punishments to fit the crime. He turns one group of racketeers into rats to be chased by a magical panther, leaving killers suspended in mid air to stare at the skeletons of their past victims or giving a gangster eternal life as a human ice cube to reflect on his crimes.
Joining Stardust in Hanks' pantheon is Fantomah, The Mystery Woman of the Jungle who possesses the powers of telepathy and control over everything in the jungles where she lives. The statuesque blonde in her black negligee exacts the same twisted justice on those who despoil her lands and it's denizens. When she metes out her punishments her face changes from hollywood beauty to a skull-headed gorgon. Other characters are the less godlike lumberjack/proto-enviromentalist Big Red McLane and Flash Gordon rip-off Buzz Crandall.
All in all this is a fantastic collection of the Golden Age of comics' neglected outsiders.
Joining Stardust in Hanks' pantheon is Fantomah, The Mystery Woman of the Jungle who possesses the powers of telepathy and control over everything in the jungles where she lives. The statuesque blonde in her black negligee exacts the same twisted justice on those who despoil her lands and it's denizens. When she metes out her punishments her face changes from hollywood beauty to a skull-headed gorgon. Other characters are the less godlike lumberjack/proto-enviromentalist Big Red McLane and Flash Gordon rip-off Buzz Crandall.
All in all this is a fantastic collection of the Golden Age of comics' neglected outsiders.
December 12, 2023
In the gang hideout:
"Our anti-solar ray will check all motions and thereby destroy the power of the earth's gravity! Do you know what that will mean? As soon as the motion stops, all the people will fly off the earth's surface into outer space!"
"What will happen to us?"
"We'll chain ourselves to the ground!"
"But first, we'll charge the earth with out hydraulic balance ray to keep the water on the surface, and we'll magnetize all automobiles and ships so that they will stay on earth!"
***
This is all done totally straight-faced with very unique and brilliant drawings. The cartoon style is fantastic and the colors used in this reprint are exceptional. This is probably the only superhero comic from before the 60s that I have enjoyed.
Saying that it is still a bit too wordy, like most older comics. The stories are very short, so there's not much in the way of an extended narrative on display here.
Worth checking out if only for the zany plots, strange superhero characterizations, and brilliant comic art.
The book also contains a comicbook story about the editor meeting up with the author's son. Turns out Hank may not have been such a great guy. It's a strange ending to a collection of his work and definitely begs for a reinterpretation of his work. It's strange re-reading his work realizing that he was a drunk who abused his wife and children. The cruel retributions enacted by his heroes seem seem so out of place. Perhaps after he abandoned his family when his son was only 10 years old he submitted to a form of punishment? The editor explicitly warns us in the introduction to the second volume of Hank's work to "bear in mind as you read these stories that were created by a man who once kicked his four-year-old son down a flight of stairs.
"Our anti-solar ray will check all motions and thereby destroy the power of the earth's gravity! Do you know what that will mean? As soon as the motion stops, all the people will fly off the earth's surface into outer space!"
"What will happen to us?"
"We'll chain ourselves to the ground!"
"But first, we'll charge the earth with out hydraulic balance ray to keep the water on the surface, and we'll magnetize all automobiles and ships so that they will stay on earth!"
***
This is all done totally straight-faced with very unique and brilliant drawings. The cartoon style is fantastic and the colors used in this reprint are exceptional. This is probably the only superhero comic from before the 60s that I have enjoyed.
Saying that it is still a bit too wordy, like most older comics. The stories are very short, so there's not much in the way of an extended narrative on display here.
Worth checking out if only for the zany plots, strange superhero characterizations, and brilliant comic art.
The book also contains a comicbook story about the editor meeting up with the author's son. Turns out Hank may not have been such a great guy. It's a strange ending to a collection of his work and definitely begs for a reinterpretation of his work. It's strange re-reading his work realizing that he was a drunk who abused his wife and children. The cruel retributions enacted by his heroes seem seem so out of place. Perhaps after he abandoned his family when his son was only 10 years old he submitted to a form of punishment? The editor explicitly warns us in the introduction to the second volume of Hank's work to "bear in mind as you read these stories that were created by a man who once kicked his four-year-old son down a flight of stairs.
August 6, 2016
I cannot overestimate how much I loved this book. And for whatever reason, I read the short story about the editor meeting Hanks's son before reading the book and so this knowledge of Hanks the drunk and negligent father influenced how I read the entire book. Hanks's main characters--Stardust and Fantomah--are so ridiculously overpowered that there is no question going into the story about who is going to come out on top. If anything, once you get a couple stories in there is a pervading sense of dread (or anticipation, depending on how twisted you are) about what sort of horrible punishment is going to be inflicted on the evildoers. From eternal prisons of ice, to disintegration rays, to alien head-absorbing giants, to invisible creatures with clawed flaming hands, there seems to be no limit to Hanks's imagination when it comes to this sort of thing. In addition, the bad guys never seemed to have any lesser goal than the complete destruction of civilization. I kept wondering all the while if a man who couldn't keep himself sober or take care of his family took some kind of comfort in creating a world where evil could never prevail. Conversely, maybe the evildoers represented Hanks himself and Stardust and Fantomah were entities by whose hand he felt he deserved to be punished. Can't wait to get into volume 2!
March 1, 2020
Primer tomo dedicado a la obra de Fletcher Hanks:
I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!
Editado por y con posfacio de Paul Karasik
01 FANTASTIC #1: "Presidential Assassination" featuring Stardust
07 JUNGLE #75: "Org's Giant Spiders" featuring Fantomah
14 FANTASTIC #11: "Skullface Takes Over New York" featuring Stardust
22 JUNGLE #10: "The Flaming Claws" featuring Fantomah
29 FANTASTIC #13: "The Fifth Columnists" featuring Stardust
37 FIGHT #2: "The Red River Gang" featuring Big Red McLane
42 FANTASTIC #7: "Gyp Clip's Anti-Gravity Ray" featuring Stardust
49 JUNGLE #9: "Lions Loose in New York" featuring Fantomah
56 FANTASTIC #16: "Slant Eyes" featuring Stardust
64 PLANET #7: "Lepus and the Colliding Planets" featuring Buzz Crandall
73 FANTASTIC #3: "The Demon's Tidal Wave" featuring Stardust
79 JUNGLE #3: "The City of Gold" featuring Fantomah
86 BIG THREE COMICS #2: "De Structo & the Headhunter" featuring Stardust
94 JUNGLE #7: "Diamond Thieves" featuring Fantomah
101 FANTASTIC #5: "Wolf Eye's Vacuum Tubes" featuring Stardust
107 AFTERWORD: "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks" by Paul Karasik
dedicado a Fletcher Hanks Jr.
I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!
Editado por y con posfacio de Paul Karasik
01 FANTASTIC #1: "Presidential Assassination" featuring Stardust
07 JUNGLE #75: "Org's Giant Spiders" featuring Fantomah
14 FANTASTIC #11: "Skullface Takes Over New York" featuring Stardust
22 JUNGLE #10: "The Flaming Claws" featuring Fantomah
29 FANTASTIC #13: "The Fifth Columnists" featuring Stardust
37 FIGHT #2: "The Red River Gang" featuring Big Red McLane
42 FANTASTIC #7: "Gyp Clip's Anti-Gravity Ray" featuring Stardust
49 JUNGLE #9: "Lions Loose in New York" featuring Fantomah
56 FANTASTIC #16: "Slant Eyes" featuring Stardust
64 PLANET #7: "Lepus and the Colliding Planets" featuring Buzz Crandall
73 FANTASTIC #3: "The Demon's Tidal Wave" featuring Stardust
79 JUNGLE #3: "The City of Gold" featuring Fantomah
86 BIG THREE COMICS #2: "De Structo & the Headhunter" featuring Stardust
94 JUNGLE #7: "Diamond Thieves" featuring Fantomah
101 FANTASTIC #5: "Wolf Eye's Vacuum Tubes" featuring Stardust
107 AFTERWORD: "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks" by Paul Karasik
dedicado a Fletcher Hanks Jr.
August 29, 2007
I'm liking this not necessarily because of Hanks' art, but the afterword, which is relayed itself through sequential art and discusses the potential significance of Hanks art, and why anyone would care about his work. And in that search, to discover Hanks' 'true character' at least as relayed by his estranged son, and his ultimate fate, one ponders the great questions of the arts and life.
When you have someone like Hanks, does it detract from the art, or does their backstory in fact enhance our appreciation of it? And what we see even in the afterword becomes suspect, but there's also the suspicion, as shown in the last page, that some of our answers may be in front of us the whole time.
It's not quite up there with Maus or It's A Bird, but it's worth seeing and judging for yourself...
When you have someone like Hanks, does it detract from the art, or does their backstory in fact enhance our appreciation of it? And what we see even in the afterword becomes suspect, but there's also the suspicion, as shown in the last page, that some of our answers may be in front of us the whole time.
It's not quite up there with Maus or It's A Bird, but it's worth seeing and judging for yourself...
July 18, 2015
Hanks was completely screwed up and by most accounts not a nice guy, but some how he was able to create some brilliant comics.
These stories are comics boiled down to their purest form: crazy, larger than life ideas, basic story structure, crazy art and great characters.
He takes the basic character ideas and tropes of GA comics and goes nuts with them, but without the slightest hint of irony of self-awareness.
Stardust, his most famous character, a space wizard/ superman clone, who is not so much on a quest for justice, but rather comes across as a bored cosmic being who is passing the time by screwing with Earth criminals.
His jungle girl has funky mystical voodoo powers.
Red Lane, heroic wandering lumberjack, is the most mundane character, but is great as he solves every problem by finding out who the bad guy is and punching them until they stopped doing evil.
These stories are comics boiled down to their purest form: crazy, larger than life ideas, basic story structure, crazy art and great characters.
He takes the basic character ideas and tropes of GA comics and goes nuts with them, but without the slightest hint of irony of self-awareness.
Stardust, his most famous character, a space wizard/ superman clone, who is not so much on a quest for justice, but rather comes across as a bored cosmic being who is passing the time by screwing with Earth criminals.
His jungle girl has funky mystical voodoo powers.
Red Lane, heroic wandering lumberjack, is the most mundane character, but is great as he solves every problem by finding out who the bad guy is and punching them until they stopped doing evil.
May 11, 2016
It takes some doing after all the books I have read to stun me. I read this book with my mouth open, amazed at the imagination and frightened by the simplicity of its apocalyptic world view. This work was done in the 1930's and it really resonates. There is something profound about it. Each story is about evil, grasping powers set on controlling the earth and it was hard not to find parallels in our own time. The dialogue is simple but has some fresh zing and Hanks also uses silence to great effect. On reflection I wonder if these stories were strongly influenced by the Old Testament. The colors were no doubt designed to be a cheap afterthought but they are surprisingly effective. I would say the children of the 1930's who regularly read these comics probably turned out to be interesting adults.
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