You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! [Paperback]

Fletcher Hanks (Author), Paul Karasik (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

Readers of the first Fletcher Hanks volume—I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets—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.

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!

Full-color comics throughout

Editorial Reviews

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 - Vice )

[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. (Grovel )

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 )

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 - Robot 6 )

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. (fústar )

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. (Rod Lott - Bookgasm )

[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! (Edward Kaye - Hypergeek )

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. (Whitney Matheson - USA Today )

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. (Paul Di Filippo - Sci-fi Wire )

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. (Chris Sims - The-ISB.com )

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. (Iann Robinson - Crave Online )

An unforgettable look back at one of Golden Age comics' greatest and most unlikely talents. (Tom Spurgeon - The Comics Reporter )

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. (The Onion A.V. Club )

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. (Burl Burlingame - Honolulu Star-Bulletin )

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. (Michael H. Price - Fort Worth Business Press )

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. (Mark London Williams - The SF Site: Nexus Graphica )

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 )

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606991604
• ISBN-13: 978-1606991602
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Fantagraphics

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Return of Fletcher Hanks, August 15, 2009

By 

Harry Mendryk "Harry Mendryk" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! (Paperback)

Fletcher Hanks, who also went by various aliases, was certainly one of the more unusual artists from the history of comic books. When comics were very new and very popular a lot of the artists used were frankly rather poor. It would be easy to overlook Hanks as just another of these crude early practitioners, and in fact that is exactly what happened to him until relatively recently. However Hanks' art really was not crude but it was very unusual. Fletcher realized right from the start that comics should be more then just real and everything should be pushed further then would be tolerable in any other media. For instance Hanks would make the hero so tall and massive that it would be hard to view him as an ordinary human, which was off course the whole point. Hanks' scripts reflect the same need for exaggeration; the title for the book comes from a line in an actual story. For example it is not enough for a villain to be defeated but terrible punishment would also be inflicted. It is safe to say that Hanks' stories are unlike anything else in comics.

Art restorations for both Hanks books are just terrific. The paper for the original comics has yellowed and the inks have faded. However the scans used in these books have all been restored to their original vibrancy with good clean white backgrounds. The restored scans are all nicely printed on flat paper in a book large enough to make for enjoyable reading. I wish everyone published comic book reprints this way and perhaps someday they will.

This book is meant as a companion piece to the earlier "I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!". For someone only interested in purchasing one book on Fletcher Hanks I would suggest the first volume. Not because the stories found in the first book are any better then the second, but because it explains Hanks' history in a graphical story by Paul Karasik. Karasik did a great job and what he reveals about Fletcher Hanks puts the artist in a totally new perspective.

Instead of a graphic story, "You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!" has an introduction by Paul Karasik. This introduction makes even clearer that Karasik comes from more of an academic then a comic book background. Here and in the previous book, Karasik makes much of the fact that Fletcher Hanks did all the scripting, drawing, inking and lettering himself. While the making of comic books is typically a division of labors, when comic books first started that often was not the case. For example before they teamed up in the earliest work of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon both artists did all these steps themselves as well. Further evidence of Karasik's academic background can be seen in his trying to answer the question of whether Fletcher Hanks was an outsider artist. It is not a question that would even occur to a comic book fan. There is no such a thing as an outsider comic book artist, at least until recently, because comics were popular publications that required cooperation between many individuals to go from the artist's drawing into the hands of the purchaser. No one person could truly do it all outside of the mainstream; a realization that Karasik does come to as well. That Paul Karasik does not come from a comic book background does not detract from his essay, he still has some interesting things to say including a short interview with Hanks' former employer Will Eisner. After all those years it is amazing Eisner still remembered Hanks. Hanks had also worked for Joe Simon but Joe no longer recalls him.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is the Better of the Two Volumes, September 15, 2009

By 

J. W. Kennedy "in statu uiae et meriti" (Richmond, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! (Paperback)

It has more variety than the previous book. It has a nice introduction that tells pretty much all that can be learned about Fletcher Hanks at this point. The biography is far from complete. What was he doing between 1930 and 1939? How did he wind up drawing comic books in New York? Why did he stop after only two years? What did he do with himself for 35 years until he was found dead on a park bench? We may never know the answers to these questions. All we have are the reminiscences of Hanks' children, and approximately 330 pages of comics.

And what about these comics? The intro asserts that Hanks should not be considered an "outsider" since he was a professional artist and was very much working "inside" the comics industry at the time. The intro also soberly reminds us that the comics we are about to read "were created by a man who once kicked his four-year-old son down a flight of stairs."

It was in this volume that I realized Fletcher Hanks could actually draw really well when he wanted to, and that therefore the crudity of style in the first volume was intentional, the result of a conscious decision imposed by the limitations of comics publishing at that time. It was in this volume that I really started to see and appreciate exactly what Fletcher Hanks was doing. Their bizarre appeal aside, these comics stand on their own as pure art. There's a certain naive, intense sincerity running through them which is rare in this medium. It hits you on an unexpected level.

Why did Hanks quit drawing comics? Perhaps more importantly, did he ever find personal redemption? Did he ever come to grips with his inner demons? In light of the scant information we have about him, one is tempted to view the story of Fantomah vs. the Jungle Demon (page 124) as wistfully autobiographical. It is equally likely that Hanks was nothing more than a hack, exploiting his own artistic talent to scrape up some booze money, and then quitting when he got bored or found a better racket. Maybe he went off on a bender and got fired for missing his deadlines. We will never know. All we have is two-and-a-half years' worth of truly strange comics. And maybe that's all we need from someone like Fletcher Hanks.

If you seek a monument, this book is it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Come on, you fiend, and pay the penalty!, May 11, 2010

By 

Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! (Paperback)

This book is a follow up to I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!. Taken together, the two books reprint the complete comic book works of Fletcher Hanks. Hanks worked in the comic book industry between 1939 and 1941, and then disappeared off the face of the earth. All his stories featured heroes battling dastardly villains. The most notable of his heroes are Space Smith, Stardust "The Super Wizard", Fantomah "Mystery Woman of the Jungle" and Big Red McLane "King of the Northwoods". The comics Hanks did were like nothing else or his era, or any other era for that matter. The first thing you may notice is that his male heroes had very long necks, but beyond that, his stories are very strange. In fact, the stories frequently make no sense at all! I realize I haven't done a very good job of describing the comics, but it's hard to describe the indescribable.