No 01

Scott TeplinAdam Haynes

SauerkidsJohn Kerschbaum

INTERVIEWDave Cooper

FEATUREFletcher Hanks

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Made in Norway by Retard Design © 2008

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Who is Fletcher Hanks?

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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 ASSEM-BLED 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 character-ized 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 acknowl-edged in the first place,” explains Karasik. “He is one of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium.”

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.

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.

“Fletcher Hanks isnot just overlooked,

he was never acknow-ledged in the first place. He is one of

the greatest cartoon-ists in the history

of the medium.”Paul Karasik

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1 and 3–5From Stardust The Super Wizard.

2 and 6Fantomah, 1939–1941When Fantomah uses her pow-ers, her normally beautiful face turns into a blue skull (though her curly blonde hair remains unchanged).

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7–8From Fantomah

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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 com-ics 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.

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. “Not only is it a rediscovery of his work, it’s a rediscovery of his man.”

The last chapter of the book is a comic strip penned by Karasik himself where he portrays his discovery of Hanks’s post-comics life. The strip captures Karasik’s dumbfound-ed surprise when he discovers that Hanks isn’t the iconic hero he expected but in-stead a deeply flawed man.

“I went into this proj-ect convinced Fletcher Hawks was one type of

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.

“Raw, powerful stuff. I’m glad to see

a book like this. Fletcher Hanks was

a twisted dude.”R. Crumb

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NEW YORK-ARTIST SCOTT TEPLIN IS A MASTER OF THE CRUMB-INFLUED DRAW-ING 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.

is drawing and drawing and drawing and d

rawing and drawing......

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ISBN: 978-0810958388

As difficult as it may be to believe today – when comic-book superheroes fill our movie screens and serious, willfully ob-scure comic-strip creations such as Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan merit serious examination in the New York Times Book Review – there was a time when comic books and newspaper comic strips were considered the ghettoes of the art world, places for hacks and eccentrics: one step away from outsider art.

Now a big, beautifully designed book rescues some comics from obscurity and claims them as the fascinating, often striking original creations they are. Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionar-ies 1900-1969, by Dan Nadel (Abrams), makes good on its title to shed light on

ISBN: 978-1560978282

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 to cut Hitler’s career short. This being Jason, nothing works out as planned. This being Jason, there’s a poignant love story tucked inside the main “poli-sci-fi” escapade. The familiar Jason Repertory Company of flop-eared dogs and near-sighted crows is at the top of its game, lucidly conveying deep emotions with a tilt of the head or a bowed back. There’s a little more dialogue than usual but seldom a wasted word, never a wasted panel. There’s deadpan humor in an early sequence where guilt-ridden customers struggle to explain why they’d want to order a rub-out. With its arresting title and clever plot lines, could this be Ja-son’s breakthrough book? It would make a more compelling movie than some of

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.

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 Ho-gan’s Alley, the first comic-strip success) to R. Crumb (keep on truckin’!) earned recognition for creating something ap-proaching – and in some cases, culminat-ing in – capital-A Art.

Nadel is interested in the more disrepu-table stuff, because he knows that it’s often in the obscure corners of capitalist enterprise that odd, eccentric, even per-sonal 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 Fan-tastic Comics in the 1930s. Hanks’ works were crudely drawn yet utterly hypnotic, absurdist comic-book tales about world disaster, featuring a hero with enor-mous shoulders and a neck that narrows upward to a tiny yet handsome leading-man’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 exag-geration (in the case of male characters) and the sexy, so-called ‘’good-girl art’’ style (in the case of the female protago-nists) to invent wild dreamscapes in which Sparky finds himself in the King-dom 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, caterpil-lar-like lower-body.

ISBN: 978-3899552218

The Upset documents a new breed of contemporary artists associated with the Lowbrow Art movement and Neo-Surreal-ism. 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 rec-ognition for their style and approach to creating art that is sprouting from and largely influenced by visual subcultures. These young artists, who are associ-ated with the widespread movements of Lowbrow Art and Neo-Surrealism, share similarities with the popular art move-ments 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 tech-nical 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 em-ploy 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-

Reviews

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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 intro-duces 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

“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 es-says 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 Eis-ner’s syllabus: (1) Comics as a Form of Reading looks at the interplay of word and image in comic books that has cre-ated 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 mod-ern comic strip as a calligraphic style variation. The key subject here is that of images without words. (3) “Timing” con-siders 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 fram-ing 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 emphasiz-ing the idea that these frames do not correspond exactly to cinematic frames because they are part of the creative pro-cess and not the result of the technology. Eisner examines encapsulation, the panel as a medium of control, creating the pan-el, the panel as container, the “language” of the panel border, the frame as a narra-tive device, the frame as a structural sup-port, the panel outline, the emotional function of the frame, the “splash” page, the page as a meta panel, the super-panel 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 ap-plication of words and the various ways then can add meaning to a series of pan-els, and practical examples of how writ-ers and artists work together to create comic book stories. (7) Application (The Use of Sequential Art) makes a distinc-tion between the functions of sequential art as instruction and as entertainment. This leads to a discussion of not only the graphic novel and technical instruc-tion comics, but story boarding for com-mercials 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 ty-pology (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 & Se-quential Art” and Scott McCloud’s “Un-derstanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” but I really see the two books as being complementary. Although you obvi-ously 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 Mc-Cloud’s book as “a landmark dissection and intellectual consideration of comics as a valid medium,” which is a fundamen-tal assumption of Eisner’s work here. The primary value of “Comics & Sequential Art” is for professional and amateur art-ist, 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 recommendsThe IT Crowd

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

CooperSaying Farewell to Comics?

Dave

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IF CANADIAN ARTIST DAVE COOPER IS NOW RENOWN INTERNATIONALLY FOR HIS PAINT-INGS, LET’S NOT FORGET THAT HE HAS ALSO PRODUCED GRAPHIC NOVELS THAT HAVE PAR-TICIPATED 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 TOR-MENTED CORNERS OF THE HUMAN SOUL. THIS PORTRAIT OF A PAINTER UNABLE TO FREE HIM-SELF 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.

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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

“Of course there are some comix nerds who are all upset

that I’m not doing co-mix, but they’ve been

replaced by regular art enthusiasts who

may not even know that I started as a

cartoonist.”Dave Cooper

1SuckleFantagraphics, 1996

2RippleFantagraphics, 2003

3Eddy Table from Weasel #1–6Fantagraphics, 1999–2003

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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 draw-ing. 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 incred-ible 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 prob-ably 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 hap-pened 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

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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.

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?

Not at all. My parents are confirmed agnos-tics. 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 flow-ers and bunny rabbits in my mind.

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 char-acter 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 impro-visation 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 subse-quent drafts I try to retain that energy and un-predictability 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

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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?

Good question. That whole “triptych” concept is a little half-baked. I just liked the way it sound-ed. 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.

Dan & Larry was just never a part of that in my own head. While it could fit with the others sty-listically, 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 realisti-caly because of its autobiographical contents. Why did you draw it more cartoony? Was it to have some distance with the subject?

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

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

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

I agree with you on that one.

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 collec-tion 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 ap-proached 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 specifi-cally 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 gratify-ing to know that my audience was still interest-ed in my non narrative work. It certainly could

“Also, with theexception of Ripple,

I always hatedrawing comics

realistically. It’s just plain boring for me.”

Dave Cooper

4Oil paintingUnderbelly, 2005

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have gone either way. And now that the second book of paintings has just been released (Un-derbelly 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 cartoon-ist. So basically, my readership on the art books is about the same as it used to be for the comics.

[Groth], he said, why don’t you do a big hard-bound 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?

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 inter-connected 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.

5Oil paintingUnderbelly, 2005

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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