Synopses & Reviews
Fletcher Hanks was the first great comic book auteur. That is, he wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered all of his own stories. He completed an astonishing 48 stories in three years from 1939-1941. As a one-man-cartooning-band, his work packs the wallop of a unique and unified artistic vision. He was a true comics visionary. In the earliest days of the comic book, before censorship, it was "anything goes!"--and in the tales of Fletcher Hanks, anything went!
The superhero Stardust gazes down at evil-doers from space and doles out ice cold slabs of poetic justice with his wizardry. A villain out to kidnap all the heads of state gets turned into a giant head, himself... no body, just a head! The jungle protectress, Fantomah, looks like Jean Harlow in a skin-tight black negligee. But when she sees an evil scientist drugging gorillas to become slaves, her head transforms into a flaming skull and she tosses the villain to the gorillas who proceed to graphically tear the guy limb from ragged limb.
Although the early comic books were meant for the kiddies, today's mature readers are stunned by their pop surrealism and outright violent mayhem. The first volume of Fletcher Hanks stories, I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets! (in multiple printings) was an Eisner Award-winning smash hit and a staple on "Best of the Year" lists.
Comics fans were thrilled to come upon a cartoonist of this caliber whom they had never heard of before. Non-comics fans who read about the book in The Believer and other journals were stunned to discover an Outsider Artist in comic book form. Edited by cartoonist Paul Karasik (who also provides an insightful introduction), this second volume, You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!, collects all of the rest of Hanks's comic book work. That's right...all! The 31 tales in this book (more than twice as many as in the first), when combined with the first volume, comprise The Complete Fletcher Hanks!
Review
"I mean, holy. Effing. S---... Was Hanks insane or otherwise mentally handicapped? Dunno, but as editor Paul Karasik points out in his meaty introduction, this was a man mean enough to kick his 4-year-old son down a flight of stairs... You'll love how much you hate [these works]; you'll hate how much you love them." Grovel
Review
"Back in the Golden Age of comics there were few comic auteurs but Fletcher Hanks was one of the few. ... The stories are weird and grim. The art is unprofessional and beautiful." Nick Gazin
Review
"[T]hese extraordinary visions from a different, four-colour era are as bold and striking as they are violent and strange.... Classic comics from a different age." Michael H. Price Fort Worth Business Press
Review
"Once you see one of Super Wizard Stardust's grotesquely ironic punishments or blonde bombshell Fantomah's inexplicable transformations to skull-headed jungle avenger, it's impossible to look away. Fantagraphics and Editor Paul Karasik take a return trip inside Hanks' demented psyche, collecting the entire remaining chunk of the uniquely unsettling work from this do-it-all Golden Age cartoonist of singular, warped vision." Wizard
Review
"Gathers all the remaining material that the alcoholic, abusive [Fletcher] Hanks did during his brief tenure as a comic book creator in the late 1930s and early 40s... [T]here's still plenty of weird and wonderful tales to delight and disturb... [and] there are panels here that are rather stunning in their ability to create tension and drama... The work remains strange, powerful, funny, terrifying and yes, at times beautiful." Chris Mautner
Review
"The work in You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! (produced entirely by Hanks, at breakneck speed) might be testament to rage-filled, borderline psychosis--but it's thrillingly vital and magnificently (uniquely) strange for all that." Chris Mautner Robot 6
Review
"[T]hese surreal tales from the dawn of the super hero are uncompromisingly vivid, brutal, and at times, completely insane! ... Imagine reading this in the 1940s! It must have scared the crap out of people then, and it still remains eerie and bizarre even to this day!" Rod Lott Bookgasm
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"Fletcher Hanks was an early, forgotten great of comics: He drew from 1939-1941, and his work is vivid, funny and incredibly surreal... Hanks' work evokes a childlike energy that makes it seem as if he drew as much for himself as he did for the rest of the world. That creative spirit never goes out of style." Edward Kaye Hypergeek - "The Best Graphic Novels of 2009"
Review
"Crude but powerful drawings; an eye-shattering color palette; helter-skelter plotting, often with anticlimactic, fall-off-the-cliff endings...terror and glee at the misery of humanity, salted with some token of morality. Yes, that's the Fletcher Hanks formula for a unique, unforgettable, Golden Age comics masterpiece." Robot 6
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"As much as I've been looking forward to the second collection, I honestly thought there was no way it could be as crazy, awesome, or crazy-awesome as the first one. I was wrong." Paul Di Filippo Sci-fi Wire
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"One of the greatest comic book talents you've never heard of.... If you want to understand the essence of comic books in their purest form then pick up You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! and learn." Chris Sims The-ISB.com
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"An unforgettable look back at one of Golden Age comics' greatest and most unlikely talents." Iann Robinson Crave Online
Review
"Hanks' hyperactive, colorful, robust, and crazy disproportionate art is perfectly matched to his over-the-top storytelling...Hanks left behind a body of work that's compelling to read simply because it's so lunatic and inadvertently hilarious. There are few artists, from the Golden Age to today, that so deftly blended goofy dialogue with terrifying violence and surreal situations; for better or worse, Hanks was a real original." Chris Sims The-ISB.com
Review
"Hanks' groove, taken back to back like this, is unsettling... It can be downright creepy. Generally, when you talk about a comic auteur's 'issues,' you're talking page count, not whether he has his head screwed on straight. It's multiplied by Hanks' art style, which at first seems crude but is actually quite stylized and consistent. Many images, such as troupes of unfortunates flying in hurtling, screaming weightlessness, have the impact of nightmares... And the twisted comics universe once inhabited by Fletcher Hanks is eerie and unsettling, and fascinating in what it reveals about the man with the pen." The Onion A.V. Club
Review
"A vessel of combined artistry and wrath, whose published legacy is as nightmarish as it is brilliant. The art reproductions capture vividly both Hanks' aggressive drawing style and the garish colors of the original Depression-into-wartime publications." The Onion A.V. Club
Review
"There is such a relentlessly fervid, even crazed, sheen to all [Fletcher Hanks 's] work, that you can't look away. ... Hanks seemed nearly demon-driven in these stories of constant fighting, killing, betrayal and revenge. The panels are often cramped, and the color schemes are nearly incandescent, and you're not sure whether to liken the rawness of it all--elastic, rubber-boned physiognomies included--to listening to a record by Fear, circa 1980, or watching a half-dressed man shouting on the corner." Michael H. Price Fort Worth Business Press
Review
Fletcher Hanks was one strange, f-ed up bastard who created some of the weirdest, creepiest, and (entirely by accident) most revealing comics of the Golden Era. --Steve Hockensmith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Synopsis
The first volume of Fletcher Hanks stories,
I Shall Destroy All CivilizedPlanets (now in its fourth printing) was an Eisner Award-winning smash hit and a staple on "Best of the Year" lists. Edited by cartoonist Paul Karasik, this second volume,
You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation, collects all of the rest of Hanks comic book work. The thirty-one tales in this book, when combined with the first volume, will comprise The Complete Fletcher Hanks Fletcher Hanks was the first great comic book auteur: that is, he wrote, penciled, inked and lettered all of his own stories, many of which feature the cold space wizard superhero Stardust or the jungle protectress Fantomah. Today's mature readers - both comics fans and non-comics fans who learned about the book from magazines such as
The Believer and other journals - are stunned by these comics' pop surrealism and outright violent mayhem.
Synopsis
Readers of the first Fletcher Hanks volume----were stunned by its pop surrealism and outright violent mayhem. This larger second volume, when combined with the first, comprises the complete comics work of the heretofore forgotten Golden Age visionary.
About the Author
Paul Karasik is the co-author (along with David Mazzucchelli) of the perennial graphic novel classic City of Glass, adapted from Paul Auster's novel, as well as How to Read Nancy (with Mark Newgarden). He is also the editor of You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! and I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, two acclaimed books about the Golden Age comic book artist Fletcher Hanks. He lives in Martha's Vineyard.