The Most Remarkable Man

The best part of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks is Paul Karasik's afterword in comics form. Of course, most people should sample Hanks's own comic-book work from the early 1940s once in a lifetime, just to appreciate the depths of human madness, but seeing more of it doesn't add up to more insight.

In contrast, Karasik's afterword about visiting Fletcher Hanks, Jr., does offer that insight. As a comics fan and chronicler, Karasik (at least the version depicted as a character) starts with high hopes that he might meet the legendary lost cartoonist, maybe even come away with some original art or enough material for a New Yorker profile. As in Art Spiegelman's Maus, the cartoonist depicts himself at work on the book we're reading, thinking about how to tell a story while trying to justify his comic-book interests to a parent.

As the afterword proceeds panel by panel, however, Karasik learns that the senior Fletcher Hanks was a nasty, violent drunk. Instead of being a planet-saving hero like his creations Stardust and Fantoma, Hanks was more like his stories' malevolent villains. Karasik inserts panels from those stories to show the parallels.

Fletcher Hanks, Jr., was happy to tell Karasik about his father, but the matter-of-fact, level-headed World War 2 vet was well beyond hero worship. Instead, he displays the heroic qualities that Karasik depicts himself as looking for.