egg_gremlin's review
1.0
Meh, too racist. It was occasionally wacky enough to be slightly entertaining, but the editor's note at the end just felt like this weird guy walking around, wondering why the world doesn't idolize this "flawed genius" as much as him.
kristennd's review
4.0
Very golden age, very weird. The epilogue really enhanced it. My favorite comics character is the Spectre, so the fates of the villains weren't all that unique/startling. He only had a couple basic ideas, but they were strong ones.
darren_cormier's review
3.0
This is not a review of the book of the same title. No, really, it's not. It's a manifesto, first espoused here on this semi-read blog, of how I, a mild-mannered thirty-something writer, considered polite by most, shall, in actuality, and with an abundance of commas, one day destroy all the civilized planets.
Seriously, that's what it is.
Why are you laughing?
Well, okay. It's not a manifesto, and I fully lack the world domination gene, so, I suppose... reluctantly and with much sighing... I should talk about the book of the same title. But this isn't a review.
I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! is a collection of comic strips of the cult figure Fletcher Hanks. Hanks is a legendary figure among comics historians and aficionados. His work appeared under many pseudonyms and in many publications in the 1930's, when comics were still in their infancy. He has been routinely characterized as an "Ed Wood of the comics world", a grossly inaccurate metaphor and primarily only used because it sounds catchy. Hanks was more the nascent comics world's Kilgore Trout, the struggling, pulp science fiction writer of Vonnegut's novels (an alter ego of Vonnegut himself).
Collected in this volume (and its companion You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation) are the complete archived material of Hanks, including his most lasting and popular creation Stardust, a supernatural superhero with unlimited strength and intelligence. The plot lines are always thin and formulaic: a group of gangsters conjure the most convoluted and ill-advised schemes to achieve world domination--invisible fusing fluid to freeze all transportation in order to enslave all Americans and take over the world; the creation of a tidal wave to drown every living creature--plots which are usually defeated by Stardust, who travels from his home planet to stop the crimes.
The most characteristic element of Hanks' works were the wildly inventive and violent means by which the hero, be it Stardust or Fantomah (the female ruler of the jungle), or Big Red McClane (the honorable lumberjack) or any other two-dimensional stock hero, uses to stop the crimes. The elaborate tortures are the results of Hanks' depraved and haunted, destructive mind, one that the editor of the collection, Paul Karasik, reveals in his afterword.
Karasik, in his efforts to interview this long-lost comics hero of his, discovers an address of a man named Fletcher Hanks Jr., himself a decorated air force pilot and writer of a memoir about his time serving as a pilot in WWII. It turns out this was Hanks' son, who proceeds to tell Karasik the real story of his father:
According to a review and feature article in The Believer from August 2007, "Fletcher Hanks, nicknamed “Christy” after Baseball Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson, was, by all accounts, a louse. An alcoholic and a wife-beater, Hanks once kicked his four-year-old son, Fletcher Jr., down a flight of stairs. The punt and subsequent tumble left the boy unable to speak intelligibly for five years. 'My old man didn’t like runts,' explained the younger Fletcher. The boy was runty, to be sure, and suffered from rickets, but his dad’s rage was something beyond reckoning. 'My father,' he said, 'was the most no-good drunken bum you can find.'"
The senior Hanks abandoned his family in the 30's, stealing his son's money as he left. He was found frozen to death on a park bench in New York in the 70's.
The afterword, in fact, is the only semblance of emotion in the collection, other than the outsized rage and disturbing lengths of righteous indignation foisted upon the victims. Hanks did not rid himself of his demons on the page alone. It is an emotional reminder that sometimes the artist doesn't match up to the art itself. In the case of Fletcher Hanks, given the id-driven elaborate vengeance plots, we should not be surprised that the person and the art itself match. The work seems to be mostly a mechanism for Hanks to put on paper the more violently depraved machinations of his mind. The tragedy is that Hanks didn't stop at the page.
The work is strange, twisted, raw. But Hanks' influence on the future of comics cannot be minimized. The rise of Flash Gordon, the Justice League, much of the Marvel universe of the 60s can be seen as a result of Hanks' work, albeit much tamer.
In my trips to the library, I passed by this title in the graphic novel shelves frequently but would ignored it; it seemed raw, campy, D-list superheroes. However, I also like to consider myself a self-imposed champion of the obscure, of the outposts of literature, those forgotten works that no one else knows about.
The eminently humane Kurt Vonnegut wrote of this collection, "The recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a major work of art." I like to delude myself that I'm in good company for having read this collection.
Seriously, that's what it is.
Why are you laughing?
Well, okay. It's not a manifesto, and I fully lack the world domination gene, so, I suppose... reluctantly and with much sighing... I should talk about the book of the same title. But this isn't a review.
I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! is a collection of comic strips of the cult figure Fletcher Hanks. Hanks is a legendary figure among comics historians and aficionados. His work appeared under many pseudonyms and in many publications in the 1930's, when comics were still in their infancy. He has been routinely characterized as an "Ed Wood of the comics world", a grossly inaccurate metaphor and primarily only used because it sounds catchy. Hanks was more the nascent comics world's Kilgore Trout, the struggling, pulp science fiction writer of Vonnegut's novels (an alter ego of Vonnegut himself).
Collected in this volume (and its companion You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation) are the complete archived material of Hanks, including his most lasting and popular creation Stardust, a supernatural superhero with unlimited strength and intelligence. The plot lines are always thin and formulaic: a group of gangsters conjure the most convoluted and ill-advised schemes to achieve world domination--invisible fusing fluid to freeze all transportation in order to enslave all Americans and take over the world; the creation of a tidal wave to drown every living creature--plots which are usually defeated by Stardust, who travels from his home planet to stop the crimes.
The most characteristic element of Hanks' works were the wildly inventive and violent means by which the hero, be it Stardust or Fantomah (the female ruler of the jungle), or Big Red McClane (the honorable lumberjack) or any other two-dimensional stock hero, uses to stop the crimes. The elaborate tortures are the results of Hanks' depraved and haunted, destructive mind, one that the editor of the collection, Paul Karasik, reveals in his afterword.
Karasik, in his efforts to interview this long-lost comics hero of his, discovers an address of a man named Fletcher Hanks Jr., himself a decorated air force pilot and writer of a memoir about his time serving as a pilot in WWII. It turns out this was Hanks' son, who proceeds to tell Karasik the real story of his father:
According to a review and feature article in The Believer from August 2007, "Fletcher Hanks, nicknamed “Christy” after Baseball Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson, was, by all accounts, a louse. An alcoholic and a wife-beater, Hanks once kicked his four-year-old son, Fletcher Jr., down a flight of stairs. The punt and subsequent tumble left the boy unable to speak intelligibly for five years. 'My old man didn’t like runts,' explained the younger Fletcher. The boy was runty, to be sure, and suffered from rickets, but his dad’s rage was something beyond reckoning. 'My father,' he said, 'was the most no-good drunken bum you can find.'"
The senior Hanks abandoned his family in the 30's, stealing his son's money as he left. He was found frozen to death on a park bench in New York in the 70's.
The afterword, in fact, is the only semblance of emotion in the collection, other than the outsized rage and disturbing lengths of righteous indignation foisted upon the victims. Hanks did not rid himself of his demons on the page alone. It is an emotional reminder that sometimes the artist doesn't match up to the art itself. In the case of Fletcher Hanks, given the id-driven elaborate vengeance plots, we should not be surprised that the person and the art itself match. The work seems to be mostly a mechanism for Hanks to put on paper the more violently depraved machinations of his mind. The tragedy is that Hanks didn't stop at the page.
The work is strange, twisted, raw. But Hanks' influence on the future of comics cannot be minimized. The rise of Flash Gordon, the Justice League, much of the Marvel universe of the 60s can be seen as a result of Hanks' work, albeit much tamer.
In my trips to the library, I passed by this title in the graphic novel shelves frequently but would ignored it; it seemed raw, campy, D-list superheroes. However, I also like to consider myself a self-imposed champion of the obscure, of the outposts of literature, those forgotten works that no one else knows about.
The eminently humane Kurt Vonnegut wrote of this collection, "The recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a major work of art." I like to delude myself that I'm in good company for having read this collection.
vinceyface's review
3.0
A delightful collection of some of the very first comic book stories, delightfully dark and a bit crude by today's standards but still a fun read. The real selling point of this is the interesting short in the back where the curator of this collection has drawn/written a comic of the time he met Fletcher Hanks Jr.
theartolater's review
4.0
This is a very fascinating read, not so much because the comics are great (they are horribly, horribly dated), but that this is a bit of a historical document of a lost artist in a lost era. In a way, the story at the end by the editor who compiled this was the real meat of this, as we learn a bit about who Hanks was.
As long as you don't go into this expecting crazy great comics, you'll find a lot to love here. The importance of this is more key than the contents.
As long as you don't go into this expecting crazy great comics, you'll find a lot to love here. The importance of this is more key than the contents.
stevereally's review
4.0
I'm sure Fletcher Hanks drew these things, but I rather suspect he had a child write them. Any adult sense of how the world works at all is missing from these stories. On the other hand, the cartoonist's son called him a terrible drunk, and maybe he just created all these batshit nutso episodes when he was drunk out of his mind or something.
plaidbrarian's review
5.0
I gave this 3 stars at first, but the more I think about it over time, the more it grows on me, to the point where getting a copy of my own is now Priority A1 at New York Comic Con, so I think that bumps things up to a full 5 stars. Comics were never this bizarre before Hanks, and I don't know if they have been since him, either.
rickklaw's review
5.0
The world of comics was radically different in 1939. No single artist proves this dictum than the largely-forgotten Fletcher Hanks. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, the first collection of Hanks' work, introduces a new generation to this artist's strange works.
Soon after the April, 1938 introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, new publishers sprang up and needed content for the suddenly-popular comic books. Almost anyone who could draw landed a job in the burgeoning industry. During this mad scramble Fletcher Hanks, who obviously understood little about anatomy, began publishing stories in a variety of obscure publications such as Fantastic, Jungle, Fight, and Big Three Comics.
Hanks' fantastic stories usually feature the intergalactic protector Stardust or Fantomah, mysterious woman of the jungle. Both beings meted out justice and vengeance upon the guilty like some cosmically-powered Shadow, though these heroes went far beyond the punishments of that legendary cloaked avenger. Villains are frozen in space, dissected, poisoned, and transmogrified. The penalties inflicted matched the heinous and creative crimes committed, usually mass murder of millions for greed, by a variety of methods such as stopping the Earth's rotation, tsunami, suffocation, huge spiders, and "giant flaming hands." Each story in this collection concludes with some uniquely horrific act.
Of the fifteen Hanks stories, all but two feature both heroes. One starred Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods, a lumberjack who defends loggers against the marauding Red River Boys. The other showcases the Venusian Interplanetary Secret Service agent Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol as he struggles against the evil in the universe.
Often crude but always dynamic, Fletcher Hanks' art recalls his better known contemporary Basil Wolverton. Hanks' career spanned just three years, 1939-1941, after which he disappeared into obscurity.
Paul Karasik's illustrated afterword grants an inside look into the life of the mysterious Hanks. Karasik tracks down Fletcher Hanks, Jr. and uncovers some disturbing and fascinating information about the elder Hanks.
Complete with color-corrected art, this lush production falters only in the lack of background information about the stories and the artist himself. A fascinating and somewhat outlandish collection, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! rescues Fletcher Hanks from the purgatory of forgotten creators and restores his rightful place among the pantheon of the bizarre.
(The review originally appeared on RevolutionSF.)
Link:http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=3637
Soon after the April, 1938 introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, new publishers sprang up and needed content for the suddenly-popular comic books. Almost anyone who could draw landed a job in the burgeoning industry. During this mad scramble Fletcher Hanks, who obviously understood little about anatomy, began publishing stories in a variety of obscure publications such as Fantastic, Jungle, Fight, and Big Three Comics.
Hanks' fantastic stories usually feature the intergalactic protector Stardust or Fantomah, mysterious woman of the jungle. Both beings meted out justice and vengeance upon the guilty like some cosmically-powered Shadow, though these heroes went far beyond the punishments of that legendary cloaked avenger. Villains are frozen in space, dissected, poisoned, and transmogrified. The penalties inflicted matched the heinous and creative crimes committed, usually mass murder of millions for greed, by a variety of methods such as stopping the Earth's rotation, tsunami, suffocation, huge spiders, and "giant flaming hands." Each story in this collection concludes with some uniquely horrific act.
Of the fifteen Hanks stories, all but two feature both heroes. One starred Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods, a lumberjack who defends loggers against the marauding Red River Boys. The other showcases the Venusian Interplanetary Secret Service agent Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol as he struggles against the evil in the universe.
Often crude but always dynamic, Fletcher Hanks' art recalls his better known contemporary Basil Wolverton. Hanks' career spanned just three years, 1939-1941, after which he disappeared into obscurity.
Paul Karasik's illustrated afterword grants an inside look into the life of the mysterious Hanks. Karasik tracks down Fletcher Hanks, Jr. and uncovers some disturbing and fascinating information about the elder Hanks.
Complete with color-corrected art, this lush production falters only in the lack of background information about the stories and the artist himself. A fascinating and somewhat outlandish collection, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! rescues Fletcher Hanks from the purgatory of forgotten creators and restores his rightful place among the pantheon of the bizarre.
(The review originally appeared on RevolutionSF.)
Link:http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=3637
invertible_hulk's review
4.0
Post-modern before there was a Post-modern (PrePoMo? ProtoPoMo?) -- these comics are a lot of fun, if a bit hard to swallow in large doses.
I was a bit disappointed with Karasik's afterword. It just felt greedy and lazy, as if the only reason he tracked down Hanks, Jr. was in hopes of finding some buried, forgotten body of work; as if finding out more about who Hanks actually was was just an excuse to make contact.
I was a bit disappointed with Karasik's afterword. It just felt greedy and lazy, as if the only reason he tracked down Hanks, Jr. was in hopes of finding some buried, forgotten body of work; as if finding out more about who Hanks actually was was just an excuse to make contact.
keef's review
5.0
Truly bizarre golden age comics from an unknown and underappreciated creator. These comics are so bugfuck loony that I can't stand it.
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