Number 2578: ...and the 2021 Thanksgiving Turkey Award goes to...

It is that day.  I put on my tuxedo and stand on the dais declaring the award to my readers. The Thanksgiving Turkey Award has been given every year since the inception of this blog, with the exception of one Thanksgiving (and perhaps someone out there gave thanks that I didn't show it that year). The Award, as I usually say at this time, is judged and given by me and is up to my choice alone. This year I have broken one tradition, which is to find a story (singular) to present, instead I am giving two stories. Both are by the inimitable Fletcher Hanks. Hanks got the Award last year, also, which makes him the first repeater in our yearly tradition.

With Hanks it is almost too easy, but stacked up against other comic book creators from the early years of the comic books, he was then an original, and still lives in our hearts as the man whose creations, artwork, dialogue, etc., are unique. I say “unique” although several comic book creators from the late '30s and early '40s had their own bizarre visions, but no one seemed to be as bizarre as Hanks, and that isn’t just my opinion, but the opinion of everyone who writes about Hanks.

I rarely give four turkeys as an award, but Hanks undoubtedly gets about as close as one can get to my vision of a perfect turkey, therefore today’s choice earns the rare four turkeys.

The episodes of “Space Smith” and “Stardust” by Hanks were published in the same issue of Fantastic Comics #3 (1939].

Number 2473: Thanksgiving Turkey Award: Stardust!

It is the day of the American Thanksgiving, the holiday gathering, with food, on the last Thursday of November. Sorry, nothing to eat here. The annual turkey award is only for the silliest, or most stupid or awesomely oddball comic book story I have seen this year.

I picked an example of what made Fletcher Hanks one of the most screwball comic book men of all time. His stories are trippy, and his artwork just plain weird. Stardust lives on a planet and watches what goes on in our solar system so he can get the criminals. Get them he does, usually with a bizarre and vengeful punishment.

For this particular story, taken from Fantastic Comics #12 (1940), Stardust rescues a woman who remains nameless throughout the story. Artist Fletcher Hanks has made Stardust much bigger than the only other people, a villain, Kaos, and the no-name girl. Stardust’s head is twice human size, even though in a couple of head and shoulders panels his head looks tiny! Still, he and the girl seem to have a physical attraction. “Would you like to come to my private star for awhile?” asks Stardust, a real smooth talker. She agrees.

Hanks’s artwork is always unusual. He breaks whatever comic book laws there are in depicting super people in flight. Hanks’s decision in this story is to show Stardust’s body from a birds-eye view of his back while flying. Hanks didn’t need to draw Stardust’s face.

Considering the body of his work in the early days of comic book, it is almost too easy to name a Fletcher Hanks story the award winner. But, he gets the prize. I give this story 3 and 1/2 turkeys.

Here is the Stardust story from Fantastic Comics #1. Just click on the thumbnail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go to the Turkey Award winner for last year. Links will take you eventually back to the first entry, from 2006.

Number 2247: Fantomah’s secret pit of jungle horrors

Here we go again into the mind of Fletcher Hanks, who had a vengeful view of good vs evil. And characters. And his artwork.

Four white men in pith helmets are forcing Africans to work for them in a diamond mine. Fantomah, who can do things such as turn her face into a skull, and fly, and wiggle her fingers and make magic, wreaks her vengeance on them. In an unusual story development (“unusual” is the key word) Fantomah puts all the white men into one body. Such weird doings are known to pop up in Hanks’s stories. Fantomah then banishes the four-in-one bad man to the place of jungle horrors. Horrors is right! Besides strange giant green men, there are white cobras, looking like sex-education diagrams of sperms heading for the egg. (Maybe it’s just my comic book mind seeing things in pictures.)

There was only one Fletcher Hanks, and he left comics (or was asked to leave) early on. I wonder what his work would have turned into had he kept on drawing comics. I can imagine 1950s horror comics by Hanks that were never to be.

From Jungle Comics #7 (1940):

Number 2238: “We will blast you loose from your brains!”

“Big Red McLane” was another comics creation of the oddball comic book writer/artist, Fletcher Hanks. Big Red is not as powerful as another of Hanks’s heroes, Stardust, but has that eccentric charm that is a hallmark of Hanks’s comic book career.

Big Red is a lumberjack boss, and he goes up against “Sledge,” an evil lumberjack boss who wants Big Red’s neck of the woods. And who wouldn’t? It looks terrific! Consider the splash panel, where Red struts blithely down a groomed path, where nary a fallen leaf or dead tree impedes him. He looks so happy that he is unaware of Sledge’s gang lurking behind those perfect trees.

Red can fight.* The sound effects of his blows to the villainous crew remind me of the Batman television show of the 1960s. On one page we “hear” SOCK! BIFF! BANG! On another SLUG! BONG! and the incongruous ZOWIE! Fletcher Hanks had a fascinating and quirky way about his stories, and it is why over the years his reputation has grown.

From Fight Comics #7 (1940):

*In Fight Comics #9 Red went to San Francisco to look for a former fiancée, and wound up in a boxing match. The teaser at the end said we will see more of his boxing career beginning in the next issue, but the bell rang and the fight was over for Red. He was never seen again.

Number 2094: Space Smith and the 7th son of the great Skomaw

A couple of weeks ago I showed the first Stardust story by Fletcher Hanks. There are two stories by Hanks in Fantastic Comics #1 (1939), Stardust and Space Smith. Hanks got to sign his Stardust story with his own name, but used a pen name, Hank Christy, for Space Smith.

Not that it matters. Both stories are off the wall, but Stardust really wins the prize for most oddball of the two. I have read many Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers imitations from the early years of comic books and Space Smith fits into the space hero oeuvre. He travels with his girlfriend, Dianna — and did anyone complain about Flash and Dale, Buck and Wilma, not to mention all of their imitators, traveling with partners without being married? Oh, the scandal! — so like many other space heroes, Space and Dianna meet some crazed dictator who wants to take over the Earth, and by the way, wants to marry the girlfriend, too. (Considering her status as girlfriend, maybe Dianna should have considered the offer.)

In this case the dictator is Skomaw, “the 7th son of the great Skomaw.” (I am glad he made his lineage clear for the sake of anyone looking into his claim to the throne.) Also typical: Space and Dianna bust out and encounter some Martian horrors along the way, including a giant mosquito. With that, Skomaw and his giant brain and the “imp men,” I think Fletcher Hanks hangs on to his reputation as creator of some of the screwiest of screwy early comics.

Number 2088: A sprinkle of Stardust

Fletcher Hanks deserves his reputation as one of the most unique of the early comic book creator/artists. His stories can be...well...berserk.

In the origin tale of Stardust, for instance, Stardust’s arrival on Earth is foretold by a voice on the radio. Stardust, whose attitude toward justice is very Old Testament, is heralded by a disembodied voice like that of an angel, as if Stardust were a god. Hanks, who died years later on a park bench, presumably of alcoholism, probably had his own demons working on him. Whatever the reason, his works, almost 80 years old, are now prized as being both crazy and entertaining. His huge lettering shouts a god’s punishments for evil.

Paul Karasik’s two volumes for Fantagraphics reprinting the entire Hanks story collection,* are still available, and highly recommended.

From Fantastic Comics #1 (1939):

*“I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets” and Turn Loose the Death Rays and Kill Them All!: The Complete Works of Fletcher Hanks.