Now I know what love is. Before, not so much, but definitely now, yes I do. And I owe it all to Fletcher Hanks. Who is this mysterious master of my emotions? Let me tell you.Fletcher Hanks was a comic book creator who froze to death on a New York City park bench in the 1970’s. Rewind 30 years, however, and you’ll find the source of my love, a little comic called “Stardust the Super Wizard”, penned by dear Mr. Hanks at the end of the Depression, as war spread across Europe, and America turned to primary-colored pages of crudely drawn fantasy for comfort – for escape. This was the Golden Age of comics. For those of you not geeky enough to know what the Golden Age is, it’s where Superman and Batman came from (Spiderman was from the Silver Age, about the same time period when Hanks found himself homeless at the start of a brutal Northeastern winter).

Hanks was, quite frankly, crazy as all hell. “Stardust” is the surreal story of a nigh-invincible superhero who harnesses the power of stars and uses his nigh-limitless array of rays to stop gangsters, in particular, from ending all of civilization, as gangsters are wont to do. Sometimes he crushes people. These stories are crude, and the artwork is cruder, and the vigilante justice meted out is the kind of thing that would raise red flags in school systems if a black trenchcoat-clad student were the artist. But at the same time they’re brilliant and so far ahead of the curve (Jack Kirby, eat your heart out) that if you didn’t know better you’d think they were a psychedelic creation of the 70’s (a time Hanks would never even get to see).

Why am I bringing up a 70-year-old comic, you ask? Because by the grace of whatever particular brand of divinity you ascribe to, and probably in its level of miraculousness owing to the combined power of all faiths everywhere, publisher Fantagraphics has recently released a compilation of Hanks’ work from his short-lived comics career in an absolutely stunning book edited by Hanks “scholar” Paul Karasik. It’s called “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets.” The book features several “Stardust” stories, as well as the equally astounding “Fantomah – Mystery Woman of the Jungle.” Sometimes her head turns into a skull-head, which is simply amazing (even more amazing is the pseudonym Hanks used for the Fantomah comics – Barclay Flagg).

I haven’t explained the love yet. These comics are CRAZY with a capital every-letter. Let me give one example – the one when my heart swelled as I read. In the first story in the compilation, Stardust captures a group of spies, suspends them in the air, and then uses a special ray to summon the skeletons of the spies’ innocent victims, and has the skeletons hover in front of the already-hovering spies!!! Needless to say, this particular panel should be framed and hung in the Louvre. Did I mention that sometimes Stardust just crushes people with his bare hands?

From his blurb on the back cover of “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets,” the late, great Kurt Vonnegut probably said it best:

“The recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a great work of art.”

If it’s good enough for Kurt it’s more than good enough for the rest of us. Buy this book. Read this book. Make other people buy and read this book. It’s a little piece of forgotten culture that we’d all do good to unforget.