Manic Monday Bonus--Well, Somebody's Been Using The Thighmaster!

Apparently, it's going to be a Fletcher Hanks kind of morning...

While flying to the moon, "Space" Smith and Dianna encounter...

...as, of course, space between Earth and the moon is full of floating space islands.

And who lives there?

And they're not called hoppers for nothing!

Maybe ray guns can stop them?!?

Nope.

I like how every single time Dianna or the narrator refer to him, they put Space in quotation marks. Like they're pronouncing it in a way that passive-aggressively mocks his attempt to give himself a lame nickname. Sure, anything you say, "Space!"

Wait...is Space seriously not wearing shoes? Or is it just a coloring error?


You know what every spaceship needs? Big metal nets.

So, uh...what do we do with them?

OK, that does not seem like a wise ides.

Yes, they leap all the way from the tops of skyscrapers to their floating space island. Who needs spaceships?!?

Oh, Fletcher Hanks, I'll have what you're having!

From Fantastic Comics #5 (1940)

Tabu And The Sixth Sense!!

Fletcher Hanks was straight up nuts. Gloriously so!

Jungle man Tabu once saved the life of a hermit witch doctor. As a reward:

Great! Tabu can see dead people now? Guess the symbols on playing cards?

Ha ha, that would be silly. No, Tabu can do amazing things now, like...

I could almost buy that--an extra sense (maybe like Daredevil's radar sense, perhaps) that lets him "sense" the lay of the land, and avoid obstacles and threats and stuff.

Ah, but the "sixth sense" is so much more than that!!

OK, I don't think you can credit those abilities to any "sense."

Still:

Well, this is a Fletcher Hanks story, so whether it's set in the jungle or outer space, you know it's going to ultimately be about over-the-top and insane vengeance against the bad guys.

When Tabu finds a village destroyed by "slave raiders," he uses his powers to mercilessly torment them. And when he finally confronts the in person?

OK, that is not a "sixth sense"!!

What. The. Frak?!?

JUSTICE!!

The witch doctor is so impressed, that...

A seventh sense?!?!?! Holy crap, what can that do?!?!?

We never found out what Hanks might have intended for a seventh sense, as he only did the first Tabu story before movie on to the even more insane Fantomah strip.

Tabu continued under other hands for well over 100 issues, his powers waxing on waning on the writers' whim. His origin was retconned to need a dead jungle wizard's magic cloak to have his powers (SPOILER ALERT: he loses the cloak A LOT in those stories!).

And of course, no one ever made Tabu's stories as hardcore demented as Fletcher Hanks.

From Jungle Comics #1 (1940)