Fletcher Hanks

Fletcher Hanks Sr. occupies a unique and significant, if brief, position within the history of American visual arts, bridging documentation projects of the Great Depression and the explosive genesis of the comic book industry. Hanks was an active participant in the Index of American Design, a key initiative that sought to document historical domestic artifacts. His precise renderings from 1935 to 1936, including detailed studies of objects such as a Silver Chocolate Pot and a Gate-leg Table, demonstrate a meticulous, drafting-table precision, and these works are today held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art.

This technical expertise provided a strong foundation for his short but highly influential foray into sequential art. Active primarily between 1939 and 1941, Hanks defined a distinct and visually arresting style within the nascent Golden Age of Comic Books. Working under multiple identities, including Hank Christy, Charles Netcher, C. C. Starr, and Barclay Flagg, Hanks focused his attention exclusively on the adventures of all-powerful, supernatural heroes.

His narratives were less concerned with traditional continuity than with the immediate, visceral depiction of moral enforcement. Hanks crafted a highly polarized universe where transgressors faced elaborate and often brutal supernatural justice. The sheer severity of his heroes’ power, and the uncompromising nature of the retribution they delivered, remains the most defining feature of his artistic output; one could observe that his protagonists possessed remarkably little patience for due process.

Hanks’s commitment to dynamic composition and flat, dramatic color palettes ensured his work was instantly recognizable among the contemporary output. Though his period of activity was fleeting, his distinctive graphic vision continues to be celebrated by scholars and enthusiasts. Owing to the historical status of the early comic publishing, much of this visual material is now available in the public domain, offering researchers easy access to Fletcher Hanks prints and other high-quality prints documenting this formative period of graphic narrative.