End of tThe Double-Aughts

Jethro Bodine called James Bond Double-Aught Seven, so for the past decade, that's what I went by. I mean, not James Bond or Jethro Bodine. I used the double-aughts. I never do anything on NYE. I've told people Hallowe'en is the only holiday that I dig. But when I worked with the Elvis band, it was nuts. We played Laurel & Hardy's on 63rd and St. Louis in 1979 and I honestly was kissed by a hundred drunken women of three generations. I think I might have been kissed by Roy, the owner, but I'm not sure. I do know that the Elvis band brought him a lot of business. I worked the spotlights and handled the mailing lists. There were others, but that was the best NYE memory ever. In the 90s, I had a few parties, Harry & Diana, Jeff Osier & Cathy, Von, Erik Seckar, and my favorite people, Sean & Jessica Doolittle, driving in from Omaha.

Over the past year, I've found obscure stuff I was in, and now have a copy of a mag that I simply reviewed episodes of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. Yea, its been an odd road I've followed. I bought me a transistor radio for twelve bucks near North and Wolcott. I pretend it is an iPhone to confuse just about everyone. The black helicopters have proven me much enjoyment, and when they come back next week, I've decided to signal them with the flashlight I used at the printing plant. I somewhat solved the mystery of Pete, the handicapped man I've seen for a quarter century. My good friend Jannah made me a wonderful card, and my favorite memory is of getting a ton of swag from Marty Mundt, who was getting rid of about a babillion books. He had this three-fold of Telstar, and even though I wanted it just because it is so damn cool and the song Telstar is one of my favorites, I put the sheet into a Mylar holder and sent it to Jann. I always look back at that, it wasn't a pay it forward thing, more the idea that there was someone who would love this thing much more than I could think that I could. And so it left my hands. Made some new friends liker Greg Tramel down in Houston and Andrew in Santa Monica, TaviAnne Greiner and Louis Suarto with all their wonder photos of the night skies, and Jean Claude Smith and his wife, Sabine Hope, who have a son with cerebral palsy and that always stay in my head. I found myself unemployed for an entire year for the first time since 1978. I'm out of work 17 months, actually. I discovered the insane comic art of Fletcher Hanks via Paul Karasik, as well as THE WALKING DEAD by Robert Kirkman, likely the most incredible comic series I'll ever read. Ten trade pbs now and AMC has picked it up, filming in B&W as the book is, the zombies are the background, the real thing is the human aspects. Things I never would have thought of. A damn good read. Crappy summer, never as warm as it should be, but I kayaked twice with my friend Paul and got to glide under my favorite object in Chicago, the 16th Street Bridge. I'm taking my dog out in a minute, we'll look at the blue moon as I attempt to stop him from pissing on the front lawn, and think of the stars and the International Space Station, all the satellites, and I know the best thing I did this year was to send that three-fold Telstar away to Jannah, where it truly belonged.

The Clock, Cosmic Carson, & Paul Karasik (Our Mystery Guest)!

After you read these words, you must all--each and every one of you--go back to my previous post. Paul Karasik, the keeper of the Fletcher Hanks Torch, commented on Sunday's post, adding some juicy info about secret stuff to be found at www.fletcherhanks.com I so miss Mystery Guests. The last one was some guy who really, really thought he would "learn something" from my blog but that I should also buy Cialas from a dead Nigerian.

Onwards! I just added the first two panels, I forgot all about Siegel & Shuster's Dr. Mystic. He'd pretty much become Dr. Occult once they got the concept going. Everyone was starting out in trench coats, as Occult was very dapper. The Clock was arguably the first costumed hero, though I doubt he spent much on the costume OR the business cards he used. But there he is, the second story in SUPERMEN after future-Superman creators had a giant walk into a huge city. And then start a fight.

Two other things posted here, Cosmic Carson was drawn by Jack Kirby, gang! And Rex Dexter was a series by Dick Briefer, of whom I'll be discussing in the near future now that I have read the Frankenstein volume. Bob mentioned the similarities in Hanks' and Wolverton's styles, and I saw it, too. Without pages in front of me, I know it is because it seems as if some of the illustrations look as if the artist kept poking his pen at the page, if that makes any sense.

Now go to the previous comment page. And read up on Paul Karasik and buy I SHALL DESTROY ALL CIVILIZED PLANETS for everyone you know for Christmas.

Fletcher Hanks, Fantomah, and Stardust

Well, I posted more panels of art than I expected here. Bob had reminded me that Fantomah was the work of Fletcher Hanks, as was Stardust. I was going to mention the latter in this post, along with a few others. I'll stick with just the two tonight. And it should be mentioned that Fantomah preceded Wonder Woman by a few months as the first female character in comics. Check out the bad luck of the guy she'd end up killing by being engulfed in a tidal wave.

Hanks was an alcoholic and a wife abuser, but he seemed, by all accounts, to have left his family behind in the 1930s. As Bob mentioned, he was found dead in NYC, frozen to a park bench in February of 1976. (Things have changed, but it was not uncommon to see the homeless found frozen here in Chicago during the blizzard years of the late 70s and early 80s.) There's no way to connect the dots between 1949 and 1976, but if it involved drink, I'm surprised he lived that long: he was born in 1889. Hanks did use several pseudonyms, perhaps he found work somewhere under a different guise, but his style is quite memorable. And he is violent, but that was the Golden Age's underbelly. You could get away with bondage and beheadings. Siegel & Shuster created The Spectre a few years after Superman, and he did all sorts of things to crooks, he melted them, cut them in half with scissors, you name it.

For all the names he used, Fletcher Hanks was using his own at the end of it all, at least that's who the cops identified on that park bench almost thirty years ago.