Quite Possibly Fletcher Hanks Magnum Opus

[tripodeca113]

Possibly the most bizarre of all the Stardust comics.
The following story appeared in Big 3 #2, this was the only Golden Age appearance of Stardust outside of Fantastic Comics.



















I...I don't know what to say. I feel like I've been given a glimpse into Hanks mind and I don't like it.

Comments

[alicemacher]

De Structo's punishment has to be one of the crackiest scenes in the history of American comics. Hanks never topped it. The fate of the remaining mobsters is but the icing on this cake of inspired madness.

[mindsweeper]

See, I’m so not up on these types of stories. I foolishly figured throwing a villain’s head at a huge headless giant would be a mistake and Destructo would end up merging with him.

[cricharddavies]

I...I don't know what to say. I feel like I've been given a glimpse into Hanks mind and I don't like it.

If his son's portrayal of him was at all accurate, he was not a very good person. (And I'm not blind to the irony of me saying this.) That said, this sort of massive destruction and loss of life was fairly common in some of the pulp magazines of the time, and Hanks' punishments of the villains, while definitely his own, are not uncompletely unanticipated by the sort of ironic ends suffered by the villains of the pulps, or even the comics. ("A fitting end for his kind", anyone?)

What I'm trying to say is that Fletcher Hanks, as an artist, was not an aberration of his time, but possibly the epitome of it.

[tcampbell1000]

Some artists are pretty sadistic in real life, some are gentle souls, and when both of them put their sadistic sides in their work, it can be pretty hard to tell the difference. Jerry Siegel's work on The Spectre was pretty similar to Stardust, if not quite so over-the-top.

[alschroeder3]

Hah! That's funny...I was thinking to myself, while reading this, at the end Stardust says, "Now I become my TRUE self," and changes to the Spectre!
Not every hero has a "private STAR" for a headuarters.

[bruinsfan]

I think Fantoma would be more fitting. As in, "Well Corrigan, enough relaxation in the jungle. Gotta trade this comfy black teddy for the green cowl and go back to terrorizing the racketeers of Manhattan!"

[crinos]

"Listen you punks, this is a scientific grift."

De Structo, the Mobster who also has a degree from MIT.

Also, I love that Stardust just merges the remaining gangsters into one guy to dispatch, its a move that says "Well, I know I'm not gonna top the headless giant thing, and I'm running out of pages anyway, so fuck it, I'll just make them all one guy to finish this quick."

[vspope]

I always wanted to see Bob Burden do a Stardust homage. The man who came up with cellulite bombs, a woman breast-feeding a dictionary, a flying dead dog and Kamikaze Baseball is one of the few qualified to attempt it.

[cainofdreaming]

'Gave a little head' joke is just being too obvious here. It's not even sporting.

[full_metal_ox]

Mysterywalker has made an animated (for an extremely lenient value of the word) fanvid of this story:

http://fantasticanimation.blogspot.com/2007/01/fletcher-hanks-stardust-vs-mad-giant.html

They've also adapted "Stardust the Super Wizard vs. the Secret Army of Terrorists":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2DwVyCLW1k

[gadz00ks]

There's a lot of gems here, but I lost it at the "superiority beam."

[agharta75]

As Stardust is now public domain, I wonder if he'll ever come back like another public domain hero, the original Amazing Man (John Aman), did ...

[donnblake]

Cameo'd in a text story in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I believe.

[agharta75]

But everyone does that.

[sara]

I'm still back on the "superiority beam."