Fletcher Hanks is an interesting artist. Someone from DCM went and scanned the originals of his work in high quality for the holidays:

https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,16042.0.html

First we need to thank Tony Oliva again for all his work crafting such a fun collection as his ‘Big Red’ McLane. He’s been very patient about letting DCM debut it as part of our Christmas 2024 celebration. Tony went well above a typical file dump of ‘Big Red’ stories. After buying the rare and often expensive original books, he scanned them, cleaned them up and crafted a great cover and fun introduction to create a superior collection. Thanks Tony!

Many readers might not be familiar with the short career of Fletcher Hanks. Or call him a lesser Basil Wolverton. Print Magazine called Hanks ‘The Most Twisted Comic Book Artist of All Time’ in 2018.

We wont get into that in this intro. Tony talks about it in his collection and if you’d really like to learn more about him you owe it to yourself to find Paul Karasik’s Fantagraphics Hanks books* where he interviews Fletcher Hanks Jr about his Dad. Hanks Sr. was not a good person and clearly had some blood thirsty ideas of ‘justice’ in his twisted comic stories.

Paul Karasik is quoted in Publishers Weekly’s Comics Week August 18, 2009 - “These are basically slug-fests from beginning to end,” Karasik said of the ‘Big Red’ stories. “Hanks was the son of a Minister and, as you can see, there is plenty of hellfire and brimstone blazing through [his] stories.” From interview with Tom Spurgeon on comicsreporter.com from 2007.

Hanks was active in the very earliest days of comics between 1939-1941 when they exploded after Superman was a huge hit in 1938. Hanks went to work for Eisner & Iger for a few short years working mostly on their Fox and Fiction House titles. You’ll see his style evolve quickly, especially his page layouts. But his basic story formula only changes in the very last story of this ‘Big Red’ collection where Red actually cracks his one and only smile on the splash page. One wonders if Hanks had help with drawing the smile, it’s that rare! It’s a shame this was his last ‘Big Red’ story. Hanks might have had some fun with Red away from the forest.

‘Big Red’ is Hank’s third most drawn character. He’s best known for his ‘Super-Wizard’ space hero STARDUST and his ‘Mystery Woman of the Jungle’ FANTOMAH. (There’s are two basic Stardust and Fantomah collections on DCM in the Archives/Collections section.) Both of these heroes had god level powers that left little danger in their winning a battle. They both just had terrible timing and never arrived in time to save the day. But boy they could dish out revenge! ‘Big Red’ was Hank’s earth bound battling lumberjack hero imposing justice in the forest.

But you don’t read a Fletcher Hanks story to be impressed with the plots and character development. You come to see Hanks’ outrageous ideas of how justice works in his mind. How far he takes his revenge on fifth column gangsters, space leopard riding Amazons and elephant graveyard robbers. And in 'Big Red’s case - lumber concerns trying to muscle out rival companies with sabotage and murder. ‘Big Red’ wont stand for that, no sir! As Red says, “Step up and get it!” so we say to you, go read it if you haven’t already. ;)

The original Fantomah (where this post comes from) is great. Weird and over-the-top, but in a good way. It got taken over by another writer/artist, who turns Fantomah into a boring jungle girl that keeps getting captured in silly ways.