Zeitgeist by Theobald Carlsen

No 01

Who is Fletcher Hanks?

IF CARTOONIST AND ART EDUCATOR PAUL KARASIK HAS HIS WAY, HANKS’S NAME WILL BE RESCUED FROM THE DUSTBIN OF 20TH CENTURY COMICS’ HISTORY AND INCLUDED AMONG THE GREATS OF THE GENRE. WITH THE PUBLICATION OF “I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS: THE COMICS OF FLETCHER HANKS,” AUTHOR KARASIK HAS ASSEMBLED A VIVID ANTHOLOGY OF THE CULT ARTIST’S WORK.

Fletcher Hanks worked in the late 1930s and early ‘40s, writing and drawing for old-time comic houses like Fiction House and Fox Features Syndicate. His work was characterized by all-powerful superheroes and elaborate punishments for villains. His creations carried lurid names like Tabu The Wizard of the Jungle, Stardust the Super Wizard, and Fantomah, one of the genre’s ﬁrst female heroes. In the ‘40s Hanks disappeared from the comics scene and was mostly forgotten in the ensuing decades. According to Karasik, Hanks’s obscurity is an error that requires correction: “Fletcher Hanks is not just overlooked, he was never acknowledged in the ﬁrst place,” explains Karasik. “He is one of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium.” 2

Hanks was part of a vanished breed of comic artists who did all aspects of the comic strip by themselves, versus the assembly line model where different artists sketch, ink, and letter the comic. “This method makes very good cars that last, but it does not make very good art,” Karasik says.

“Fletcher Hanks is not just overlooked, he was never acknowledged in the ﬁrst place. He is one of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium.” Paul Karasik 1

A graduate of the Pratt Institute of Design, Karasik discovered Hanks’s work 25 years ago while working as an editor at Art Speigelman’s RAW magazine. The magazine reprinted one of Hanks’s obscure works and Karasik was struck by the powerful artistry and bizarre tone of the story. “Once you see one of these stories it melts on to your cerebral cortex,” he says. “It’s hard to forget.” Five years ago, Karasik received an e-mail from a friend in the art world with a link to a web site that displayed one of Hanks’s stories. The site rekindled his interest in the cult author and led him to a years-long process of unraveling the story of Hanks’s life after his disappearance from the comics world.

4 5

1 and 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5 From Stardust The Super Wizard. 2 and 6 Fantomah, 1939â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1941 When Fantomah uses her powers, her normally beautiful face turns into a blue skull (though her curly blonde hair remains unchanged). 6

7â&#x20AC;&#x201C;8 From Fantomah 7

“Raw, powerful stuff. I’m glad to see a book like this. Fletcher Hanks was a twisted dude.” R. Crumb

The process of researching the Fletcher Hanks anthology led him on a cross-continental quest that included journeys into the basements of hard-core comics collectors. Karasik himself is no stranger to the world of comics (his graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s “City of Glass” was named one of the 100 most important comics of the 20th century by the Comics Journal), but he nevertheless was surprised by the collectors’ degree of devotion. “This network of high-end comic book collectors is a whole new world,” he says. “I met some, shall we say...very interesting comic book collectors.” Some allowed him to scan original Fletcher Hanks pages onto his computer as long as he donned sterile white gloves and treated the comics with surgical precision.

person,” Karasik says. “He was my hero because I’d known auteur comic book artists and they’re great guys, by and large. I leave this project realizing he is a complete scoundrel. Things are not as one assumes they are.” Two legends of 20th century art and literature lend their praise to the project. In a blurb on the back, the late Kurt Vonnegut writes, “the recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a major work of art.” Underground comics legend R. Crumb opines that the anthology is “raw, powerful stuff. I’m glad to see a book like this. Fletcher Hanks was a twisted dude.” Read more about Fletcher Hanks at ﬂetcherhanks.com.

Little was known about the life of Hanks prior to Karasik’s work on the anthology. “My book is essentially a true life mystery story because I found out what happened to this guy,” says Karasik. k. “Not only is it a rediscoveryy of his work, it’s a rediscovery of his man.” The last chapter of the book is a comic strip penned enned by Karasik himself where he portrays his discovery overy of Hanks’s post-comics comics life. The strip captures ptures Karasik’s dumbfoundounded surprise when n he discovers that Hanks anks isn’t the iconic hero ero he expected but instead a deeply ﬂawed awed man. “I went into this project convinced Fletcher etcher Hawks was one type ype of

is d

NEW YORK-ARTIST SCOTT TEPLIN IS A MASTER OF THE CRUMB-INFLUED DRAWING STYLE. WITH HIS COMPELLING AND SLIGHTLY DISTURBING VISION, HE SEEMS TO BREAK ALL RECORDS WHEN IT COMES TO QUANTITY OF DRAWING. AND BOY, THE QUALITY IS VERY FINE AS WELL. See more of his works at teplin.com or his frequently updated blog futuretrash.blogspot.com.

a ing w ra

dd ra w

nd drawin

g and drawing

g in

ing raw dd

......

Reviews

the Frank Miller fare that’s out there. For people who don’t know Jason, this might make a good introduction. It’s not his best; he may never top his ﬁrst – “Hey, Wait ...” – but nobody else will, either.

ISBN: 978-1560978282

@Wied :[b_l[hi 7]W_d

ISBN: 978-0810958388

CWhl[beki >[WZ#Jh_f e\ W Xeea The Norwegian cartoonist’s latest, out for some time in a French version, is a bent time-travel yarn in which a hit man from the future goes back to 1938 to try As difficult as it may be to believe today to cut Hitler’s career short. This being – when comic-book superheroes fill our Jason, nothing works out as planned. movie screens and serious, willfully obThis being Jason, there’s a poignant love scure comic-strip creations such as Chris story tucked inside the main “poli-sci-fi” Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan merit serious escapade. The familiar Jason Repertory examination in the New York Times Book Company of flop-eared dogs and near- Review – there was a time when comic sighted crows is at the top of its game, books and newspaper comic strips were lucidly conveying deep emotions with a considered the ghettoes of the art world, tilt of the head or a bowed back. There’s places for hacks and eccentrics: one step a little more dialogue than usual but away from outsider art. seldom a wasted word, never a wasted panel. There’s deadpan humor in an early Now a big, beautifully designed book sequence where guilt-ridden customers rescues some comics from obscurity and struggle to explain why they’d want to claims them as the fascinating, often order a rub-out. With its arresting title striking original creations they are. Art and clever plot lines, could this be Ja- Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionarson’s breakthrough book? It would make ies 1900-1969, by Dan Nadel (Abrams), a more compelling movie than some of makes good on its title to shed light on

what Nadel terms ‘’an impure medium… an awkward meeting of words, pictures, and commerce.’’ The book begins near the birth of the comic strip at the start of the century and ends with the birth of underground comics in the ‘60s, after which the medium became rather less ‘’impure,’’ in the sense that everyone from Richard Outcault (creator of Hogan’s Alley, the first comic-strip success) to R. Crumb (keep on truckin’!) earned recognition for creating something approaching – and in some cases, culminating in – capital-A Art. Nadel is interested in the more disreputable stuff, because he knows that it’s often in the obscure corners of capitalist enterprise that odd, eccentric, even personal obsessions and fantasies get played out. Thus Art Out of Time showcases the work of 29 artists, including Fletcher Hanks, whose superhero Stardust the Super Wizard appeared in places like Fantastic Comics in the 1930s. Hanks’ works were crudely drawn yet utterly hypnotic, absurdist comic-book tales about world disaster, featuring a hero with enormous shoulders and a neck that narrows upward to a tiny yet handsome leadingman’s head. He battles a green, horned creature called the Super Fiend, who has the ability to set an ‘’entire planet afire by spontaneous combustion’’ (‘’I’ll start with Mars!’’ he cackles). There’s also Boody Rogers, creator of strips such as Sparky Watts and Babe, Darling of the Hills, 1940s-50s comic books that combined cartoonish exaggeration (in the case of male characters) and the sexy, so-called ‘’good-girl art’’ style (in the case of the female protagonists) to invent wild dreamscapes in which Sparky finds himself in the Kingdom of the Talking Bugs, some of whom are one-eyed green ovoids, and some of whom are conjoined busty babes whose waists are attached to a single, caterpillar-like lower-body.

ISBN: 978-3899552218

J^[ Kfi[j0 Oekd] 9edj[cfehWho 7hj The Upset documents a new breed of contemporary artists associated with the Lowbrow Art movement and Neo-Surrealism. Newly recognized by an international audience, these artists are creating works largely influenced by visual subcultures. A new breed of contemporary artists is celebrating newfound international recognition for their style and approach to creating art that is sprouting from and largely influenced by visual subcultures. These young artists, who are associated with the widespread movements of Lowbrow Art and Neo-Surrealism, share similarities with the popular art movements of the 1960s and 70s as well as urban art. The term Lowbrow may sound self-deprecating; rather it represents a distinctive artistic composition and technical approach in which art is produced. The Upset documents this movement and the artists associated with it. Feeding off an array of popular subcultures, they often draw influences from anime, comic books, graffiti and street art as well as character design. The often figurative and narrative artworks featured here employ classical techniques with great skills to create sculpture, illustration, design and painting with the use of spray cans, sharpies and elaborate colour palettes on canvas. With the evolution of new media, artists are also blending these elements with various disciplines in contempo-

rary visual art. Many of the artists in The Upset enjoy international fame and are represented in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide. The book also introduces a selection of promising talent who are breaking new ground, making it the perfect source book for those interested in ﬁne art and discovering young artists.

ISBN: 978-0393331264

Fhe\[iieh ;_id[h [nfbW_di Yec_Y Xeeai Wi i[gk[dj_Wb Whj “Comics & Sequential Art” is based on a course Will Eisner taught at New York’s School of Visual Art although originally this work was written as a series of essays that appeared randomly in “The Spirit” magazine. Eisner provides a guide book to the “principles & practice of the world’s most popular art form, and while it is of interest to those of us who read comic books it is clearly intended to be of use to aspiring comic book artists (and writers, albeit to a lesser degree). One way of measuring the book’s success is to note that I have the 24th printing of a work that was ﬁrst published in 1985 (and expanded in 1990 to include print

and computer), but then the fact that the book was written by Eisner and uses dozens of examples of his own art work to evidence his points, as well as drawings down speciﬁcally for the book, is enough to tell you this is something special. There are eight lessons in Professor Eisner’s syllabus: (1) Comics as a Form of Reading looks at the interplay of word and image in comic books that has created a cross-breeding of illustration and prose, including the idea of how text can be read as image, which shows the sense of detail Eisner brings to his subject. (2) Imagery begins with the idea of letters as images and develops a notion of how the “pictograph” functions in the modern comic strip as a calligraphic style variation. The key subject here is that of images without words. (3) “Timing” considers the phenomenon of duration and its experience as an integral dimension of sequential art, with Eisner drawing (literally) a distinction between “time” and “timing.” This chapter looks at framing speech and framing time, with Eisner making his points in the textual part of the chapter and then providing a series of comic book pages evidencing different features he wants to emphasize. (4) The Frame is a major chapter that examines in detail the sequences segments called panels or frames, with Eisner emphasizing the idea that these frames do not correspond exactly to cinematic frames because they are part of the creative process and not the result of the technology. Eisner examines encapsulation, the panel as a medium of control, creating the panel, the panel as container, the “language” of the panel border, the frame as a narrative device, the frame as a structural support, the panel outline, the emotional function of the frame, the “splash” page, the page as a meta panel, the superpanel as a page, panel composition, the function of perspective, and realism and perspective. This chapter is not half the book, but it is close, and it basically tells you everything you ever wanted to know about a panel in a comic book. When you

are taking into account the meaning of the border of the panel, then you know this is a comprehensive examination of the subject under discussion. The rest of the book deals with what you put in those panels: (5) Expressive Anatomy provides a micro-Dictionary of Gestures before covering your options in drawing the body, the face, and the body and the face. As an extended example Eisner provides his complete “Hamlet on a Rooftop,” which does the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. (6) Writing & Sequential Art talks about the relationship between the writer and the artist (whether they are two separate people or not), and various story telling elements. There are several choice examples on the application of words and the various ways then can add meaning to a series of panels, and practical examples of how writers and artists work together to create comic book stories. (7) Application (The Use of Sequential Art) makes a distinction between the functions of sequential art as instruction and as entertainment. This leads to a discussion of not only the graphic novel and technical instruction comics, but story boarding for commercials and ﬁlms as well. (8) Teaching/

Learning, Sequential Art for Comics in the Print and Computer Era lays out the range of diverse disciplines involved in comic books, laid out in a structured typology (categorized under psychology, physics, mechanics, design language and draftsmanship). Eisner also brieﬂy shows what adding a computer to the process means for creating comic books. There is an inevitable comparison to be drawn between Eisner’s “Comics & Sequential Art” and Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” but I really see the two books as being complementary. Although you obviously can shift back and forth between perspectives, McCloud is looking at the medium from the reader’s point of view and Eisner is more concerned with the creative process. Eisner has praised McCloud’s book as “a landmark dissection and intellectual consideration of comics as a valid medium,” which is a fundamental assumption of Eisner’s work here. The primary value of “Comics & Sequential Art” is for professional and amateur artist, but students and teachers, and even mere comic book fans, can beneﬁt from a serious and comprehensive examination of the art of funny books.

Zeitgeist recommends The IT Crowd We recently saw the DVD of the 1st series, and have already watched it through more than once. Maybe we have limited intelligence and a bad sense of humour, but we love this show! There are so many comedy shows trying to leap onto the political bandwagon, but The IT Crowd is just “put your feet up and laugh your head off”-stuff from start to ﬁnish.

Dave

Cooper Saying Farewell

to Comics?

IF CANADIAN ARTIST DAVE COOPER IS NOW RENOWN INTERNATIONALLY FOR HIS PAINTINGS, LET’S NOT FORGET THAT HE HAS ALSO PRODUCED GRAPHIC NOVELS THAT HAVE PARTICIPATED IN ESTABLISHING THE GENRE AS A RICH, FULL-FLEDGED MEDIA OF EXPRESSION. RIPPLE: A PREDILECTION FOR TINA IS INDEED AN IMPRESSIVE TRIP DEEP IN THE MOST TORMENTED CORNERS OF THE HUMAN SOUL. THIS PORTRAIT OF A PAINTER UNABLE TO FREE HIMSELF FROM HIS AFFECTIVE ADDICTION FOR HIS TYRANNICAL MODEL BRINGS THIS OBSERVATION OF THE CREATION PROCESS TO A PAROXYSTIC LEVEL — AS PYGMALION WILL END UP CRUSHED BY GALATHEA.

“Of course there are some comix nerds who are all upset that I’m not doing comix, but they’ve been replaced by regular art enthusiasts who may not even know that I started as a cartoonist.” Dave Cooper 1

You started your comics career in the mid eighties in the Aircel publishing company. 1986 seems to have been a big year for Canadian comics expansion (10 new titles for Aircel between 1986 and 1987 and money for the artists). Yet, in 1988, there seems to be a quick decline of the sales. What are your memories of that period? My memories are sketchy at best. I never really felt like I was aware of what was going on in the industry as a whole. I was always on the periphery at the Aircel Studios too. I’d work at home and just bring in my work every couple of weeks. That place was a nightmare — so much interpersonal drama. Barry Blair [1] would play everyone against each other to the point that everyone was either a nervous wreck, or furious to the point of snapping. Anyway, to get back to your question, I guess we just rode that trend of independent comix until it collapsed. Readers here in North America were so excited to have an alternative to superhero comics that the independents exploded too fast. Eventually after a couple of years, the readers realized 99% of what they were buying was garbage. We were totally guilty of feeding that hunger. I was a total hack in those days, a stupid teenager who didn’t have any concept of what being an artist was all about. I just wanted that paycheck so that I could go out drinking and smoking every weekend. Inﬂuence of Ed the Happy Clown... Moebius, Sfar and Trondheim are among your favorite 1 Suckle Fantagraphics, 1996 2 Ripple Fantagraphics, 2003 3 Eddy Table from Weasel #1–6 Fantagraphics, 1999–2003

artists. Their freehand drawings (and some scripts) look like they’re natural as breathing or automatic writing. Is it that aspect of their works you’re interested in? Absolutely. I couldn’t have put it better myself. That’s the quality that I love about good drawing. You get the impression that the artist is so practiced, and comfortable that they don’t have to labor over every little detail, they just have a rich vocabulary of imagery and it’s at their ﬁngertips at all times. And it’s a quality you can see in any type of artist whether they’re incredible virtuosos, or simple doodlers. I was surprised to read you were a Chaland admirer (I’m one myself but I didn’t know he crossed the Atlantic). How did you discover his work? Like most of my “great discoveries”, it was pointed out to me by my friend Patrick McEown. He’s always been my ear to the ground. I think pat may have discovered Chaland initially through old Heavy Metal magazines, then probably found some of his books in some French bookstores either here in Ottawa, or maybe in Montreal. I’ve really only become familiar with Chaland in the past 5 or 6 years. He was a masterful draftsman. In Weasel number 5 (august 2002), you were announcing a Donjon project. What happened since (I’ve heard that Killofer did the Donjon you were supposed to do)?

That was my own stupidity. I agreed to do the project after spending time with Lewis in San Diego a few years ago. But then I just kept getting buried in my own work. It was at a time when my own career was starting to really take off and demand was greater than ever. It was pretty intoxicating. I delayed and delayed until ﬁnally lewis and joann had no choice but to

give the project to Killofer. I haven’t seen the book yet, but I think it will be a bit sad when I do because it was written speciﬁcally for me, incorporating all sorts of requests that I’d made. But judging by the images I’ve seen on the internet, it’s probably a lot better book that I would have drawn anyway. I think I may lack that expansive, epic approach that many of the French cartoonists are so skilled at.

Not at all. My parents are confirmed agnostics. I’m not sure where that love of extreme contrasts comes from. I know that living in the country for the first 9 years of my life was very formative. I was always surrounded by the most beautiful, lush vegetation. But I was also always very aware of how brutal and savage nature could be. It wasn’t always just sentimental flowers and bunny rabbits in my mind.

One of the main themes of your work is the chasm between Nature and Culture (desire/ morals, childhood/adulthood...). This theme is pretty clear in your “Unnature portfolio” and drawings like the back cover of “Dan & Larry” (being an Eden Tree). Is it something coming back from your childhood, from a strict religious education?

Also, at the same time, my dad was a hobby mechanic and had a very contagious love of cars and boats, any kind of beautifully engineered and designed piece of machinery.

I’ve always been drawn to contradictions, whether it’s a beautiful thing in nature that is dangerous, or a character that’s like Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde. Mainly I think it’s creating a character or situation that’s really unpredictable and unsure. I like the sense of anxiety it can create. What would be your work methods about writing? Are you working with a lot of improvisation or with well-defined scripts? It sounds silly, but basically what I try to do is be as cavalier and improvisational as possible with the very first draft. Then with any subsequent drafts I try to retain that energy and unpredictability while refining the story as much as possible. And I try to avoid any formulas or any logical choices wherever possible. In the Ripple TPB, we can read “Ripple is the last in a series of three very loosely

“Also, with the exception of Ripple, I always hate drawing comics realistically. It’s just plain boring for me.” Dave Cooper

related graphic novels that were seven years in the making — ﬁnally completing the SuckleCrumpleRipple triptych”. That idea of “triptych” was something you had in mind from the beginning? Why Dan & Larry isn’t a fourth part?

exception of Ripple, I always hate drawing comics realistically. It’s just plain boring for me.

Good question. That whole “triptych” concept is a little half-baked. I just liked the way it sounded. They’re connected more in the sense that as a writer, they represent a certain progression for me. You could almost see the 3 protagonists as an evolving whole. Basil is birth and innocence, knuckle is complacency and fear, and Martin is selﬁshness — which ultimately leads to his being deserted and alone.

I agree with you on that one.

Dan & Larry was just never a part of that in my own head. While it could ﬁt with the others stylistically, the subject matter felt really different to me. The juxtaposition of real and surreal was sort of new for me. Sort of a precursor to the Eddy Table stories in a way. Ripple is a ﬁction drawn realisticly. Dan & Larry is a story of memories mixed with dreams drawn in a more cartoony way. Dan & Larry could have been drawn more realisticaly because of its autobiographical contents. Why did you draw it more cartoony? Was it to have some distance with the subject?

4 Oil painting Underbelly, 2005

Yes, distance is part of it. I wanted to be able to take memories (which are never accurate) and have the freedom to completely distort them and mix them with ﬁction and dream nonsense. I felt it gave the book a more poetic, surreal feeling. And I think that mood really mirrors the way I feel about the subject matter. My memories are a bizarre, hazy mess. I think with a story like that it’s better to try and capture the essence of your feelings rather than to try and accurately “document” the facts. That would have been totally boring to me. Also, with the

The other reason why Ripple is realistically drawn is maybe that it’s a book about “ﬂesh” and the human bodies would ﬁt best.

Why did you decide to go in bichromy in the Ripple TPB? Black and white wasn’t good anymore? Actually it’s sort of the other way around. I had the duotone (bichromy) in mind for the collection right from the beginning, but I decided to do the artwork in black and white ﬁrst in Weasel. I just wanted the drawing to be as modest and unassuming as possible in Weasel, and I wanted the art to be as quick and simple as possible. I thought that if I was making it duotone each issue, it would probably change the way I approached the drawing. Knowing I was going to be re-working the art eventually also gave me something to look forward to when it came time to put the collection together. Something extra that would make the book special. I wasn’t talking about the color use speciﬁcally but more of the system of having a book inside a book (like in the Watchmen, or a play inside a play in Shakespeare, or in all the Altman movies). Why did you decide to use that system? Mainly to show the disparity between reality and the way that Martin perceives it. Were you surprised by the immediate sell-out of Overbite (Weasel number 6)? Yes, I was a little surprised. It was very gratifying to know that my audience was still interested in my non narrative work. It certainly could

5 Oil painting Underbelly, 2005

[Groth], he said, why don’t you do a big hardbound art-book instead? it didn’t take much to convince me! The Fantagraphics website says that since the success of Overbite, you have been producing new work at a fevered pitch. Yes, I have two solo gallery shows scheduled for this year. One in Los Angeles in July, the other in New York City in December. (for the record, two gallery shows is one more than most sane people would have in one year.) Are you leaving comics behind for Fine Arts and children books?

have gone either way. And now that the second book of paintings has just been released (Underbelly aka Weasel #7), I know it wasn’t just a ﬂuke. The sales for Underbelly are just as good. Of course there are some comix nerds who are all upset that I’m not doing comix, but they’ve been replaced by regular art enthusiasts who may not even know that I started as a cartoonist. So basically, my readership on the art books is about the same as it used to be for the comics.

Was it your wish or Fantagraphics’ to publish that book? Originally, I just wanted to print a quite modest little catalogue for a gallery show I was having. Just for fun I thought I’d see if fantagraphics would be interested in soliciting it as the next issue of weasel. But primarily it would simply have been a little booklet to be sold at the gallery. But when I proposed the idea to Gary

A couple of months ago I might have said yes. I was burnt out on comix for quite a while there. They just didn’t interest me at all. I found painting and drawing my children’s book totally satisfying. But then some ideas for a comic started to creep back into my head. It was very interesting actually because I didn’t actually WANT to do another comic, but these little ideas kept popping into my head when I was in the shower, or when I was on the bus going to my studio. So whenever I got out of the shower, or arrived at my studio I’d write down the idea and then try to forget it. Well, after the course of about a month, there was a big stack of notes and they’d all started to magically become interconnected without much effort. Now I have this neat little script that I can’t wait to illustrate. It will be similar in mood to the Eddy Table stories from Weasel #s 1-5. In fact, Eddy will play a minor role in the book. Because of my painting schedule, the book probably won’t be out for another year and a half, or two, but hopefully it will be worth the wait.