I've been reading a book called
I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets (which I first heard about
here). It's about the life of a little-known Golden Age writer/artist named Fletcher Hanks. He wrote for a comic book called "Fantastic Stories" between 1939-1941. His work is really hard to describe. I guess surreal is the word I'm looking to use here. He wrote along the same lines as the then-current top seller, Superman, by creating a "superhero" called....get ready......
Stardust the Super-Wizard! Isn't that the most awesome name you've ever heard?
I love it.
Anyway, the thing that makes a lot of his work stand-out is the sheer lunacy of the scripts, the concepts, the abilities, and how Stardust merits out his punishments. First of all, he only seems to target "spies and traitors" always hunting down "The Fifth Column" movement. It was all very, very pro-America, especially in the increasing xenophobia that lead up to WWII.
Second, his punishments were rarely just sending them to jail. On one occasion, he causes a group of gangsters to float thirty-stories in the air and forced them to stare at the skeletons of their victims, while he went and fetched the police. On other occasions, he shrunk a man's body down to nothing, while increasing the size of his head. Thus, being only a big living head, Stardust then takes the head and throws him into a "space pocket" where an immortal African headless headhunter will chase him around for all eternity. On other occasions he paralyzes a spy (which also, somehow, makes him immortal) and then puts him in an "orbiting star" where he will have to stare at and be aware of Earth
forever. And even in another, he "stabs" about fourteen guys with a solid lighting bolt of some kind, and then hauls them to a planet made of gold and diamonds. But because of the "gravity" they can never pick up any of it AND there is an orbit that leaves the planet dark for centuries. Oh and he made sure to "slow down their blood" as to help them live for a long, long time, and thus, have to suffer for just as long. Ha! Ha! What a cruel bitch!
The cover to the book is perfectly indicative of Fletcher's strangely eerie style. The classic and assumed form and shot for a superhero to fly-by is, naturally, facing the reader. But, check out Stardust below on the cover...
There's something so off about the way he portrays this strangely detached being that's very telling of the detached creator's relationship with the world.
A few samples (circa 1940) :
While it may seem like somewhat normal Golden Age material, there was this obvious underbelly of bitterness and darkness in Fletcher's stuff. The book I'm reading goes into what little is known about Fletcher, which mostly comes from interviews with his still-living son. There are no pictures of the man Fletcher Hanks. But, as his son pointed out, his likeness is that of his characters. Stardust depicted the artist sober and aware, a father, and an intelligent artist. The Traitor/Spies that Stardust dealt with each issue are representative of him when he drank, of which he was known to do. That's the thing about Fletcher Hanks. He was gifted as hell, and could have been one of the pioneers of the Golden Age of comics. But, he was an all-out drunk, physically abusive to his wife, belligerent with his employers and fellow employees. He despised weakness, and his son bore the brunt of that displeasure. Fletcher Jr. (the son) relates a story in my book about his father pushing his four-year-old self down a flight of stairs to see if he would cry. As a small child, he of course did, and Hanks hit him more and more over the years to try and "toughen him up".
Fletcher Hanks left his wife and kid penniless when Jr. was ten-years-old. He never tried to see them again. Nothing is really known what happened to him after that, other than in 1976. A cop found him frozen to death on a New York park bench one morning. Presumably, he just became one of the homeless winos that roamed the city for the remainder of his life, finally dying from a cold winter.
It's a fascinating read, even though there is very little known about the man himself. His material, though...his work...is some of the craziest, interesting, most surreal comic fiction ever produced...
