You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation!

Fletcher Hanks was the first great comic book auteur. That is, hewrote, penciled, inked, and lettered all of his own stories. Hecompleted an astonishing 48 stories in three years from 1939-1941. As aone-man-cartooning-band, his work packs the wallop of a unique andunified artistic vision. He was a true comics visionary. In theearliest days of the comic book, before censorship, it was anythinggoes and in the tales of Fletcher Hanks, anything went The superhero Stardust gazes down at evil-doers from space and dolesout ice cold slabs of poetic justice with his wizardry. A villain outto kidnap all the heads of state gets turned into a giant head, himself no body, just a head The jungle protectress, Fantomah, lookslike Jean Harlow in a skin-tight black negligee. But when she sees anevil scientist drugging gorillas to become slaves, her head transformsinto a flaming skull and she tosses the villain to the gorillas whoproceed to graphically tear the guy limb from ragged limb.Although the early comic books were meant for the kiddies, today smature readers are stunned by their pop surrealism and outright violentmayhem. The first volume of Fletcher Hanks stories, I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets (in multiple printings) was an Eisner Award-winning smash hit and a staple on Best of the Year lists.Comics fans were thrilled to come upon a cartoonist of this caliberwhom they had never heard of before. Non-comics fans who read about thebook in The Believer and other journals were stunned todiscover an Outsider Artist in comic book form. Edited by cartoonistPaul Karasik (who also provides an insightful introduction), thissecond volume, You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation , collects all of the rest of Hanks's comic book work. That s right...all The 31 tales in this book (more than twice as many as in thefirst), when combined with the first volume, comprise The CompleteFletcher Hanks