HANKS, FLETCHER : I shall destroy all civilised planets
Comic book: 20 € (Sold out)
Maybe you have heard about this book already because it created quite a buzz and the first printing sold out quickly or maybe you read about it in the one year anniversary edition of Kuti.
Or if not, here is a a cut and paste theft from the Clarkblog.
Fletcher Hanks: I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! It's the first I've heard of a mostly unknown comic book artist named Fletcher Hanks, and the samples of his work are ... so bad they're good? No, they're beyond that. It's as if you're reading some really excellent comics from another planet where our narrative and artistic rules simply do not apply.
Hanks only worked in comics for a couple of years (1939-41)and his stuff came out from the shadiest of publishers. Not much of it has survived. I've been into comics for decades, often scouring the trades and websites for important bits of history, but I've never heard this guy's name mentioned. Tracking down and collecting these dozen or stories has been a labor of love for editor Paul Karasik, and he even includes his own comic "afterword" detailing Hanks' sad and alcohol-ridden life.
Where Ed Wood was reportedly a gentle, benign soul, Hanks appears to have wrestled with some serious demons -- and he didn't always win. In interviews (see links below), Karasik confirms that Hanks pretty much stuck to one story template: harsh godlike beings, usually chuckling with cruel superiority, exact grotesque justice from petty humans. When you read this piece on Hanks' son, Fletcher Jr., where he briefly discusses the abuse he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father ... it's hard not to view these comics as some sort of window into the warped trappings of a troubled man.
I don't have the credentials or evidence to psycho-analyze the elder Hanks. But knowing that most child abusers are themselves victims of abuse, that they're passing along the cruelty they suffered as a way of justifying their own pain, a strange and silly panel like the following suddenly resonates as both a warning and a cry for help.
There is something twisted, dark and disturbing about the infantile morality found in these tales. It's as if the cosmos was created by a godlike baby with one serious temper tantrum. The artwork is often crude, but there are sequences that radiate with a primitive urgency.
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