Customer Reviews

I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

by Glenn Phillips (Atlanta GA)

I've collected comic books for 50 years, and this was probably the most important collection of comics that I've ever read. The work of Hanks is surreal, crude yet beautiful (and impossible to take your eyes off), highly imaginative, and more importantly, it's a one-of-a-kind direct connection to a man's subconscious that exemplifies the power of the creative process.

What really put this book over the top for me, though, was the afterword by the book's editor, Paul Karasik, told as a 10-page graphic novel. In it, Karasik tracks down Hank's son and uncovers the disturbing story of Fletcher the man. This puts the violent and retributive nature of Hank's comics in an entirely different light, and is filled with surprises (including the fact that Hanks foreshadowed his own death in one of his stories, and the ultimately redemptive legacy that his son was able to wrestle from his upbringing).

For me, this book was an unforgettable journey into the world that lies just beyond the realm of imagination, yet is, nonetheless, forever linked to reality.

Fletcher Hanks, pioneering comic artist, created the most surrealistic comic environments brimming with wonder and unspeakable evil at every page turn. His larger than life heroes, Fantomah (mysterious jungle woman), Stardust (omnipowerful wizard), Big Red McLane (two-fisted lumberjack), and Buzz Crandall (space ace), all rendered with slight heads and powerful bodies, use occult powers, super science or just a powerful right hook to banish the legions of offbeat and oddball villains -- with fatal results.

Hanks' rough-hued, boldly primitive artwork and "pre-comic code" visceral storytelling, makes this volume a must for anyone who enjoyed early comic collections like Dick Briefer's The Monster of Frankenstein or Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969.

Exceptionally strange, very crudely drawn comics from a time when crudely comics were the norm. It seems that Hanks would make only three drawings of his main characters and traced them over and over for his entire comic book career. Many other drawings seem to be traced photographs or stolen from other drawn art of the time. His stories have the same traced over and over quality. Hanks was obsessed with characters destroying New York City with squadrons of bombers flown by gangsters. New York gets it over and over. Most stories have the heroes figuring out the villian's homicidal plans by the third panel but allowing the horrible destruction happen regardless. Interestingly, most of the villains' plans involve extreme mass destruction and near total genocide. Stardust seems inspired by the awesome powers of comic book hero the Spectre but it's hard to tell which came first as no dates are given for the stories.

Between the crude drawing, the bizarre logic and the odd language you are transported into a world that crosses outsider art, a mental institution and that strange kid in high school who drew disturbing comics in the corner all day. If you are familiar with Rory Hayes of the 1960's underground scene, you'll have some sort of idea what's in these pages. The exceptional afterword fleshes out the world of Fletcher Hanks a little bit but believe me it doesn't make it any less disturbing.

A great item for the comic collector especially if they have a taste for some of the more extreme psychological comics that have been produced over the past 40 years. There are certainly a number of people I would never show this to.

"Looks like crap to me." My initial reaction to these stories is that of Mom Karasik and Fletcher Hanks Jr. in Paul Karasik's graphic afterword. The artwork is crude and ugly. The stories are juvenile, violent, and formulaic. Sure, these comics are super-weird, but since when does weirdness equate with quality? Then, to top it off, we learn from the afterword that Fletcher Hanks was a violent, abusive drunkard; a thoroughly reprehensible human being. How comfortable would I be in letting myself enjoy the works of such an unlikeable man?

I proceeded to the next volume ("You shall die by your own evil creation!") which is better than this one in every way, and I realized that Fletcher Hanks' comics work grows on you.

My second assessment is this: These comics are bold, unique, completely original. The artwork is deceptively crude, concealing the brilliance of Hanks' near-flawless composition and staging. The stories are formulaic and repetitive, changing only in the villain-of-the-month details, but they provide a glimpse into the shimmering, lurid, three-color paranoid fantasies of an alcoholic madman. These truly are the kind of comics that will rot your brain. Once Fletcher Hanks' work takes hold, it will not let go. At first I did not understand why people raved about him so, but now I am beginning to see.

I still say this volume presents a very weak offering. The stories are not Hanks' best, and all of them are too thematically similar to be presented together like this. The cumulative effect is monotonous and deadening. Why were these stories chosen to represent the entire oeuvre? Volume two present the remaining works in chronological order, and in my opinion is far superior.

This is a long overdue collection of the most mystery of comic book creators. Not only are his drawings strange and weirdly naive but the story are simply out-of-this-world bizarre. Hanks style is immediate and wholly idyosyncratic on par with Wolverton for oddity and inventiveness. Fletcher and Basil are probably the lone standouts in the form. It wasnt until the underground movement began that we again see the clear awareness of artist manipulating the mark and structure of the medium in such interesting and individual ways.

Everytime I look at his work and read the stories I feel as though I am tapping into some primal awareness; some strange clarity of the world in absolutes. Having the original comics is best(I have accumulated only a few) having this book however is a rare gift-- share it with any who want to investigate genius. I only wish we knew more about him. Come check out the wonderous world of Fletcher Hanks.

Crudely drawn. Ineptly written. Insipidly plotted. To call the dialog "wooden" is an insult to plant life; to call the characters one dimensional is an insult to abstract geometric concepts.

You must buy this book. You MUST.

Fletcher Hanks was a drunken, wife-beating lout who created comic book characters of near-infinite power, who used it to concoct elaborate and complex punishments of grotesque criminals. His work exemplifies everything about the very earliest days of comics -- 100% undiluted power/revenge fantasies without a hint of internal consistency or deeper meaning. In an age when it takes 23 issues for the damn hero to have his origin story, and a near-encyclopedic set of historical cross references to even hope to understand why this guy in tights is beating up that other guy in tights, the sheer amount of... well, we can't really say "plot" or "story"... let's just say "stuff" compressed into 6 or 7 pages is simply astounding. To mangle language, this book is "un-put-downable". There is a transcendent ENERGY to Hanks' work which makes all issues of storytelling, talent, or the creator's execrable personality and habits irrelevant; this is art in its purest form, a direct link from random neuron firings in the id (yeah, I'm mixing biology and psychiatry, sue me) to the printed page, unimpeded by any internal censor, critic, or editor.

Buy it. Really.

This book and its recently released companion volume, You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation, comprise the entire output of a very eccentric and imaginative golden age comic book auteur named Fletcher Hanks.

His grotesque, ethereal imagery and bizarre, self-invented lexicon create a paranoid, vengeful, idealistic world of chicanery and omnipotent retribution
and just outcomes that is quite unique, in a time before comics lost their early, individual flavor. Highly recommended.

Fletcher Hanks's bizarre comics for Fiction House from the very early part of the Golden Age of comics are indeed something to see. In his two most memorable series, "Fantomah" and "Stardust," he basically took the idea from the Jerry Siegel-bernard Bailyn series "The Spectre" from National Comics of a nearly all-powerful superhero meting out grim justice to evildoers and ran with it... I mean really ran with it. Both Fantomah and Stardust spend nearly half their time in their stories exacting about as imaginative of punishments as ever anyone could dream up; calling them "Jacobean" hardly does them justice. Coupling this with Hanks's unbelievably strange drawing style (his villains all look like Dick Tracy villains, his heroes all look like eight-foot tall department store mannequins, and everyone always has the exact same facial expression throughout the story) makes his work seem especially surreal. It's been profitably compared to outsider art, and there does seem something not a little bit crazy about this dream world of Hanks's. It's beautiful, too, in the way outsider art is usually beautiful, but its derivativeness and its incessant repetitiveness keeps his work from being quite at the level of that of the very best outsider artists (such as Henry Darger).

What brings this very interesting volume up another notch, though, is the supplementary story told (in the form of sequential art, natch) of Paul Karasik, who becomes a huge enthusiast of Hanks's work and goes to uncover a "Fletcher Hanks" he goes to interview. What he discovers at the interview makes for a great story, which only enhances your understanding of what you've read previously in the edition. Collectors of the truly strange and unusual won't want to pass this up, and it is work that truly stays with you... albeit sometimes not quite in a good way. (The Hanks stories are in their way the stuff of extremely vivid, repetitive, and unsettling dreams.)

On at least a superficial level, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets by Fletcher Hanks is an unimpressive collection of comics from the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it is apparent why the comics have remained obscure. The art is okay but the writing is definitely missing something, such as characterization or plot development.

The greatest number of stories feature Stardust, "the most remarkable man who ever lived." This blond giant lives on a distant asteroid where his seemingly omniscient technology detects evil doings on Earth, usually involving world conquest or mass murder. Equipped with strange and powerful weapons, Stardust metes out justice. He is so utterly powerful, however, that no foe stands a chance against him, and suspense is never really an issue.

Of only slightly more depth is Fantomah, "the most remarkable woman ever known," a jungle girl with vast supernatural powers which she uses to stop people from exploiting the people and beasts of the jungle. When she uses her fullest powers, she changes from beautiful woman to skeletal monster, but she is essentially a scaled down Stardust.

There are also standalone stories featuring lumberjack Big Red McLane taking on the Red River Gang and one with Buzz Crandall stopping Lepus the Fiend (who utters the line that is the title of this book) from forcing Earth and Venus to collide.

As mentioned before, on the superficial level, these stories are quite mediocre, but as I read through the book, I realized that they are not meant to have the standard qualities one would associate with good stories. Instead, they are tales of divine justice. With their near omnipotence, Stardust and Fantomah (in particular), punish evil with fierce, often ironic justice. For example, when Stardust stops one villain from robbing Fort Knox, he gives the crook his share of "gold" when Stardust feeds him to a monstrous golden octopus. (Unlike many superheroes, Stardust and Fantomah have no qualms about killing.)

The best writing is actually in the comic-form afterword by editor Paul Karasik, which deals with Karasik's attempts to find out more about the mysterious Fletcher Hanks. He tracks down the son, who describes his father as a thoroughly unpleasant man. Karasik (and the reader) get some insights into Hanks, but he remains mostly an enigma.

This book has a certain nostalgic charm but I don't know if they are really worth owning unless you're a real comics completist. If you are, then pick this up; otherwise, approach this book with caution.

Heavily stylized, flat and bold. Hits you over the head. It is as transparent a view of one person's paranoia as you will get. The hero's punishment of criminals feels almost biblical. The panels pop with some sort of primal imagery.