Fletcher Hanks is a little-known comic book creator from the Golden Age of comics. He was a rare auteur for his era. We wrote and illustrated his works without assistance, often under a variety of pen names such as Hank Christy, Charles Netcher, C.C. Starr, and Barclay Flagg. He was a product of his time, and yet too unique to be completely a part of it. Although he wrote fairly standard superhero and adventure comic fare, his work is so magnificently weird that it merits further examination than the work of his contemporaries. Perhaps the most defining attribute of his work is that his characters exhibit a fundamental meanness that is highly unusual for the Golden Age of comics – his “superheroes” are even more sadistic than the grim ‘n gritty antiheroes of the 1990s.

Hanks was only active in comics from 1939 to 1941, but it didn’t take him very many publishing credits to make his mark on comics history. There was tremendous demand for comics at that time – the most popular title of the time (Captain Marvel) sold about 1.4 million copies per issue. This fever for superhero stories led to an ecosystem of publishing houses and work-for-hire comic book production shops. Hanks worked in one of these work-for-hire shops. He was employed by the Eisner & Iger comic book packaging company. His boss was the legendary Will Eisner. Eisner’s shop produced comic book stories en masse, then resold the tales to whichever publisher needed superhero content to sell their magazines.

By all accounts, Hanks was a punctual artist dedicated to his craft, but had a difficult personal life. Although there is very little biographical information about the man, it is known that he abandoned his family after years of mistreating them, was an alcoholic, and died penniless on a park bench in New York City in 1976. In his work, we can perform all sorts of armchair psychology. What kind of a man turns his heroes into sadists? What is going on with his fascination with punishment? What trauma persisted in his life that made him feel like children’s entertainment needed to be imbued with such violence? Although we lack explanations from the auteur himself, we can make our own inferences from examining his work.

His most popular character was Stardust the Super Wizard. Clearly a Superman analogue, Stardust was a giant of a man who came to earth from the stars to dispense rough justice upon evildoers. Stardust is portrayed as super-strong, super-intelligent, and possessing a variety of superpowers that allow him to administer whatever sadistic punishment Hanks could dream up for each issue.

Each Stardust story follows the same general outline:

1. Bad guys hatch a nefarious plot.
2. Stardust is aware of their plan using one of his scientifically-advanced surveillance devices.
3. Bad guys execute the plot.
4. Stardust intercepts them.
5. Stardust spends the next dozen panels punishing the bad guys in a gruesome and mean-spirited manner.

Most Golden Age superheroes are some variation on a macho power fantasy, but this just takes it to another level. There is no sense of justice here – only asymmetrical punishment. Stardust throws his enemies off cliffs, imprisons them on planets with century-long nights (but not before ensuring them that “special vitamins in the air” will guarantee them a long lifespan), and even rips off their heads and launches their still-conscious skull into space.

This is not the Superman of Saturday morning cartoons. This is a terrible Ubermensch that should inspire fear, not admiration.

Before you dismiss Hanks as an over-masculine thug, I should point out that he’s also credited with creating the first female superhero. Fantomah, his “mystery woman of the jungle,” predates Wonder Woman by about a year and a half. Fantomah shares the same sensibilities as Stardust, though – only the setting and gender are different. Fantomah has more terrestrial origins, but she is no less omnipotent and vengeful. Her normal appearance is that of a beautiful blonde woman (who has for some reason taken on the burden of protecting the jungles of Africa), but when she manifests her powers her appearance changes to that of a glowing skull…with long blonde tresses.

Fantomah’s modus operandi is unsurprisingly like Stardust’s. She is a force of justice that is both omniscient and omnipotent. She exacts “jungle justice” upon those who would exploit the riches of the jungle, or the denizens therein.

In Fantomah’s adventures, we witness her condemn a jungle raider to a lifetime of eating mud and fire:

Transform a pair of jewel thieves into grotesque creatures, then return them to civilization:

Drop a mad scientist into a throng of bloodthirsty gorillas (special care is taken to depict his dismembered limbs flying in the air):

And concoct an elaborate revenge wherein a gang of thieves is whisked away into a remote pit, combined into a single man, then enslaved by an underground race of monsters:

This list is not comprehensive, but you get the point.

Hanks’ prolific work also included some protagonists that lacked superpowers, but equaled Stardust and Fantomah in their zest for creative and/or brutal punishments.

“Red McClane, King of the Northwoods” was a hulking lumberjack who solved all of his problems with his fists:

I consider myself a connoisseur of weird comics, but this is the only example I know of that falls into the “lumberjack adventure” genre. I wonder why this style never caught on. I really want to read more tales of this fist-fighting, flapjack-eating, rough-and-tumble son of a bitch.

“Space” Smith is a galactic adventurer who fights alien invaders with fisticuffs and casual racism:

Tabu, the Wizard of the Jungle dispenses rough “jungle justice” upon evildoers (not to be confused with the more feminine brand of “jungle justice” practiced by Fantomah):

So what are we to make of this troubled man and his strange characters? Even golden age superheroes were no strangers to violence. But, there’s quite a difference between two-fisted justice and imprisoning foes in an eternal living hell. Since we lack a complete biography of Fletcher Hanks, it’s hard to tell. Comics were considered a fad medium at the time, so no one was performing any kind of serious historical assessment of the creators of the Golden Age. Hanks’ work does give us a small, hazy window into his psyche though. In this fictional world, Hanks must have felt free reign to exercise whatever power fantasies he could concoct, without limitation. It doesn’t take a lot of armchair psychology to conclude that a man obsessed with writing infallible, omnipotent, and cruel characters clearly had some issues in his life. Is this the work of a twisted sadist, or a man so obsessed with the injustice of the world that he imbued his heroes with a maximum drive for punishment? Or are we just reading way too much into some silly comic book stories cranked out a frenetic pace to make a buck?

For further reading, I highly recommend the omnibus of Hanks’ work, Turn Loose Our Death Rays And Kill Them All!: The Complete Works Of Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik and published by Fantagraphics Books.