You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!
by Fletcher Hanks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Fletcher HanksEditor: Paul Karasik
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-09-08
ISBN: 1606991604
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Book Reviews of You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!
Book Review: The Return of Fletcher Hanks
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!
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!
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