A Fine Day for Comics
by Dan Nadel
Monday, June 11, 2007
Well, I’m a lucky fan boy today. In my inbox this morning was a lengthy email about a massive, 464 page reprint of Winsor McCay’s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. I’m quite excited about this, and hopefully the print quality will be as good as Pete Maresca’s groundbreaking McCay volume.
So, that’s cool. Plus, the mailman brought my review copies of Paul Karasik’s indispensable I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets. Ol’ man Karasik really did it this time, bringing all his obsessive zeal to bear on Fletcher Hanks, who I hope will soon be recognized (along with demented brethren Milt Gross, Ogden Whitney and Ernie Bushmiller) as one of the great cartoonists of the 20th century. His ability to make indelible images in comic book panels is nearly unparalleled. What can I say? It’s a brilliant book. Paul was my very first serious interview back in 1999, and his section of the Ganzfeld 1 helped make that book, my maiden voyage in publishing, really special.
Annnyyyyhoooowwww, I also received Drew Friedman’s The Fun Never Stops, an excellent overview of the last 15 years of his comics and illustrations. A perfect book for toilet reading! He remains hilarious and just awesome to hang out with (in book form).
Comics. It’s fun.
Labels: Drew Friedman, Fletcher Hanks, Paul Karasik, The Ganzfeld, Winsor McCay
“Ol’ Man Karasik”, eh?
Prepare to meet your fate, Earthling!
wuv,
-p.
Fletcher Hanks’s name so obviously belongs in the same breath as Bushmiller’s that I can’t believe I hadn’t realised it before. Two cartoonists working their respective genres at 1000%, and doing so with a purity and intensity achieved by paring away all unnecessaries — leaving just gags, just superheroics. Both of their comics have this kind of hypnotic and serious and almost scary absurdity to them. Good comparison.
Fletcher Hanks work is amazingly weird and deformed. his new found popularity though is kind of telling. for a few years now i have been enjoying looking at Rob Liefield comics, not because they are good but because they are so very bad and ugly and so much of his comics also reveals way too much of his subconcious, much like Fletcher Hanks. you look at a drawing that’s supposed to be a powerful character, or a sexy character and it’s just mind boggleing to think that thoese drawings are someone’s honest attempt at depicting something like that.