Little is known about Golden Age comics artist Fletcher Hanks, but that he made some very weird comics. Hanks is probably known for the unintentional humour in his exclamatory captions and impassive, sociopathic heroes, but that tells only half the story.
Hanks allied his crude storytelling to powerful, eerie images, with a strong graphic sense in titles such as...
"'Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle', 'Fantomah Mystery Woman of the Jungle', the lumberjack hero 'Big Red McLane', and the cosmic superheroes 'Stardust, The Super Wizard' and 'Space Smith', which appeared in Fantastic Comics from Fox Publications in 1940. Little is known about the artist's fate since he left the comics field in the early 1940s."
Hanks's stories litter the internet (such as the six Stardust strips here), but Fantagraphics recently published a collection of Hanks's comics, edited by Paul Karasik, entitled I shall destroy all the civilised planets. There's an interesting review at Lady, That's My Skull.
While reading back through archived posts from one of my favourite blogs, I came across an entry about Henry Darger.
Darger was what is known as an 'outsider artist'. He produced art outside the mainstream, for his own sake, lived and worked in poverty and died in obscurity. I find 'outsider art' - or at least the stuff that is good - by turns, compelling and inspiring and depressing.
Unlike most art, it's done without hope of social reward. Many outsider artists suffer from mental illness and do not view what they do as art, so its function is very different from conventional art.
I find it inspiring because of its humanity. It shows the beauty, creativity and imagination that drive the human psyche, even the broken one, the adaptive mechanism that makes us what we are. By contrast, most art is an intellectual husk.
I find it depressing, because the term 'outsider art' betrays a fearful social attitude, not just to art, but to mental illness, normative behaviour and creative wealth.
