i shall destroy all the civilized planets

Karasik has also uncovered a dark secret: why Hanks disappeared from the comics scene. Whether he signed these various stories 'Henry Fletcher' or 'Hank Christy' or 'Barclay Flagg' there is no mistaking the unique outsider style of Fletcher Hanks.Ĭartoonist Paul Karasik (co-adapter of Paul Auster's City of Glass, and co-author of The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family) has spent years tracking down these obscure and hard to find stories buried in the back of long-forgotten comic book titles. Hanks drew in a variety of genres depicting science-fiction saviors, white women of the jungle, and he-man loggers. One thing is for certain: the stuff is bent. At once both crude and visionary, cold and hot as hell, Hanks' work is hard to pigeon hole. In this Anything Goes era, Hanks' work stands out for its thrilling experimentation. The rules governing their form and content had not been established. At the time, comic books were in their infancy.

Because he worked in a gutter medium for second-rate publishers on third-rate characters, his work has been largely forgotten. Fletcher Hanks worked for only a few years in the earliest days of the comic book industry (1939-1941). Welcome to the bizarre world of Fletcher Hanks, Super Wizard of the Inkwell. His obscure and hard to find stories are finally collected here. Welcome to the bizarre world of Fletcher Hanks, the mysterious cartoonist who created a hailstorm of tales of brutal retribution from 1939-1941.and then mysteriously vanished.

I shall destroy all the civilized planets