We must end democracy and civilization forever!

December 7, 2024 1:56 AM

Milton Glaser once said, “There are three responses to a piece of design—yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” Story after story, page after page, panel after panel: Hanks hit WOW. from Fletcher Hanks: The Most Twisted Comic Book Artist of All Time [Print]
posted by chavenet (12 comments total)

Had never heard of him but am struck by how his compositions showing groups of conspiring political villains tally with photos coming up in my news feeds.
posted by rongorongo at 2:11 AM on December 7, 2024 [2 favorites]

Mod note: By my reckoning, it's high time leopard women on giant saurians began arriving to dispense justice from their head guns! Also, we've added this to the sidebar and Best Of blog! Thanks, chavenet, for this and all your many great posts!
posted by taz (staff) at 2:52 AM on December 7, 2024 [7 favorites]

Glorious!
Wow - one hundred percent.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:32 AM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

Those early panels by Fletcher Hanks, from before the artistic grammar of comics had been standardized, are bewildering, and bewitching because of how much effort it takes to parse them.

That period in literary and artistic history, when modern mass media is coming into existence, and with it the formation of the genres we take for granted, is so interesting to me. The artists and writers working at the time are living in a city that’s being built around them. The streets and houses we recognize aren’t there yet, so the paths are different, and the spaces they worked in aren’t there anymore.

Also, and a cursory glance at Hanks’ entry on Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions, the early years of a new art form are filled with people who don’t fit snugly in wider society, for good or ill, and the work they create tends to be at odds with trends and norms.

Thanks for the post, chavenet, Fletcher Hanks had entirely evaded my notice before now.
posted by Kattullus at 4:46 AM on December 7, 2024 [6 favorites]

Born on December 1, 1889, in Paterson

HOLY SMOKES! happy (belated) 135th birthday, superhero
posted by HearHere at 5:09 AM on December 7, 2024 [2 favorites]

'Wolf-Eye' applies his gland-control magic to himself
posted by mittens at 6:25 AM on December 7, 2024 [2 favorites]

from before the artistic grammar of comics had been standardized,
The 'original' pulp novels have a similar foot-loose inventiveness/ crashing into clunky coarseness. For that matter Dracula which on the one hand is a great and wild story, on the other many layers of potential 'meta-narrative' are starved of development (and which are variously mined in later re-tellings.) The images that remain are vibrant for their 'weirdness' and freshness even now, a hundred-plus years later. (One step further, Tristam Shandy is also craziness that steps wholly formed out of 'nowhere.' Also at the cusp of a 'new' art-form.)

Works like these sit at the exact other end of the spectrum from the homemade 'Spiderman' or 'Hulk' or 'Elmo' posing for selfies in Times Square or showing up for a kids' birthday: purely weird, not weird and derivative. And god I love me some pure weird.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:09 AM on December 7, 2024 [6 favorites]

I love the work of Fletcher Hanks so much. When I reread it, which I do often, I find myself unable to read more than a couple of dozen pages in a sitting. It's almost too rich for me to take in any more than that. Yet it's also, at the same time, gloriously amateurish. Incredible stuff.
posted by Dr. Wu at 8:49 AM on December 7, 2024 [5 favorites]

Stopping parachutists by dropping large jungle cats on the canopies is, I have to admit, a flex.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:58 AM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! is in the Internet Archive
posted by Rash at 12:46 PM on December 7, 2024 [3 favorites]

Terrific find, chavenet - this stuff is incredible. Best of the Web!
posted by Rash at 2:19 PM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

Oh, this guy! I think he's great, in a fucked up way. Not for everyone, of course.
posted by ovvl at 9:40 PM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]