Fletcher Who? An Early Comics Master

by Sasha Watson, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 1/9/2007

If there are two poles in comics—the literary graphic novel and the pulp action comic—then Paul Karasik is one of the few comics creators whose work encompasses both. As an editor, he worked with Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly on RAW, then on his own anthology Bad News, where he published experimenters like Ben Katchor and Gary Panter. His own creations are as literary and intellectual as the form gets. Working with Dave Mazzucchelli, he adapted Paul Auster's novel City of Glass to graphic novel form, creating what is widely hailed as a haunting comics masterpiece.

In the comics and prose memoir, The Ride Together: A Brother and Sister's Memoir of Autism in the Family, Paul writes his half of the story in graphic novel form while his sister, Judy Karasik, writes hers in prose. Alongside these literary explorations, Karasik keeps himself firmly planted in the genre comics that the industry began with. He's a comics collector, a cartooning teacher—at the Scuola de Comics in Florence, Italy—and the editor of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks, coming out from Fantagraphics in May 2007. And in a recent conversation with PW Comics Week, Paul was kind enough to ask the first question himself.

Paul Karasik: Who the heck was Fletcher Hanks?

Fletcher Hanks worked for the first three years of the comic book industry [late 1930s]. This was the birth of the medium (as described accurately by Michael Chabon in The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) when the cheapest publishers and pornographers discovered overnight that there was money to be made in something called the comic book. It is easy to imagine a publisher thrilled to find someone like Hanks. A one-man juggernaut: writer, penciler, inker and letterer who actually got his work in on time, Fletcher Hanks is a rarity among comic book artists of any era. Even hardcore fans and collectors are unfamiliar with his work because he worked on second-rate characters for third-rate publishers and then disappeared.

PW Comics Week: You mentioned that you've been working for years on "this harebrained project." Can you tell me a little about what brought you to Hanks?

PK: In the early '80s, I was associate editor of Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine. Hanks's work was brought to our attention by cartoonist and painter Jerry Moriarty. We reprinted one of Hanks's stories in an issue of RAW. Once you see this work it gets jackhammered into your brain. I was an instant fan.

PWCW: How did the project develop from there?

PK: Because his work appeared in only the earliest comic books and not in any of the more famous ones, they are very difficult to come by, and very expensive. I have a few raggedy copies in my collection, but mostly I had to seek out collectors willing to open up their plastic-sealed treasures to place on a scanner. This is the part that took years. But at a certain point I had no choice but to go on this mad hunt once I discovered what happened to the guy.

PWCW: What happened to him?

PK: As I said, he worked for three years and then disappeared. I did some detective work and uncovered the sordid details that I reveal in the 16-page afterward to my book, a comics story titled, "Whatever Happened to Fletcher Hanks?" Let's just say that the man who delivered his villains to be frozen forever to contemplate their crimes was served up an epic ode of poetic justice.

PWCW: What are the hallmarks of a Hanks comic?

PK: As there was no one there to tell him what to do or what not to do, Fletcher Hanks's work is propelled by a singular vision and style. No marketing survey guidelines to follow. Hence his various stories tend to follow similar story arcs: crime committed followed by several pages of often savage retribution as the hero sets the world right. His work is at once crude, brutal and breathtakingly beautiful.

PWCW: How did his drawing style compare to that of other early comics artists?

PK: What sets Hanks apart is the blunt vigor of his iconography. A Hanks villain has a single evil visage, often Cro-Magnon in nature, which barely varies in expression through the adventure. To this end he is the natural heir to the grim world of [Dick Tracy creator] Chester Gould, whose characters are cursed with a particular physiognomy that determines their nature. Stardust, a major Hanks's protagonist, has exactly 1.5 facial expressions: Severe and More Severe.

PWCW: I've heard his art referred to as "primitive" more than once.

PK: It is easy to dismiss this work at first glance because it is so crude and appeared in the lowest outlet imaginable, the comic book. It also features superheroic types, a genre not known for producing masters. Worse still, however, is to lionize Hanks for the wrong reasons. This is not camp or kitsch. This is solid, powerful work created by a man with a singular vision.

PWCW: Where would you place Hanks's work in the pantheon of American comics? In other words, just how good was he?

PK: Cartoonists whose work I generally most admire are multitalented one-man bands playing a syncopated symphony with pen and ink—"syncopated" because comics are a kind of jazz, an essentially American idiom of ragtime improvisation; "symphony" because the best of them create worlds that are rich, multilayered and rewarded by revisiting. This includes such classic masters as George Herriman and Elsie Segar, as well as contemporary artists who are sometimes overlooked such as Ben Katchor and Kim Deitch. Fletcher Hanks certainly belongs in this pantheon.

PWCW: I know you're a die-hard comics collector. How do you explain that collector's urge? Is it a gene?

PK: Scientists have long been aware of the collecting gene. Recently, in trying to isolate it, they have discovered that it is firmly entwined with the nerd gene and both are buried in the spaghetti of the twisting sociopath genes. Evolution experts agree that the proclivity to collect serves a basic human survival need: the need to insulate one's house with tons of decaying newsprint while lowering your electric bills.!!!! I take some comfort in something that Robert Louis Stevenson once said about the life of a shell collector being likely to have greater value than the life of someone born rich.

PWCW: Do you find that the two tracks of your career—that of teacher and that of graphic novelist—feed one another?

PK: The teaching definitely feeds the comics because it allows me to explore different ways to fill my refrigerator and thus feed me and my family.