#10 V.T. Hamlin

I’m of a generation that grew up when comic books were at best mocked and at worst vilified for their effects on young people. If they were tolerated at all, it was as a diversion for little kids. You certainly weren’t going to read them beyond the age
of 9 or 10. If you did, parents might punish you and peers would laugh at you. More on that some other time.

I mention this because the same opprobrium did not apply to the Sunday funnies for whatever reasons. A kid like me could lie on the floor with the funnies spread out in all their four-color, broadsheeted splendor and luxuriate in them like a pig in poop. When I look back on the time I spent immersed in the fun and the suspense, the adventure and the silliness, and the many plots and sub-plots in those seemingly endless pages, I might as well have been reading a Dickens novel.



Today’s choice is another one drawn from that well of happy memory, V.T. Hamlin’s “Alley Oop,” a strip that began in the Stone Age and the rivalry between the kingdoms of Moo and Lem (as in Mu and Lemuria), and eventually made its way through many corridors of history, from Imperial Rome and Sherwood Forest to Ancient Egypt and the 20th century. It combined time travel, dinosaurs, romance, satire, and adventure centered around a kind of Paleolithic Everyman who rolled with the flow and used his brawn, his courage and his wits to survive culture shock like you wouldn’t believe.

Like so many of the other comic strips I loved, the language in “Alley” was as charming as the art. Many of the names were elaborate puns: Alley’s name was a play on the French expression, “Allez, hop!” His curvaceous girlfriend, Oola certainly owed the origins of her monicker to the sexy French phrase, “Ooh, la la!” The scientist whose time machine brought Alley to 1939 was Professor Elbert Wonmug. As a kid, I just thought it was funny, but when I got older, I realized it was a play on ein stein, or “one mug.” His assistant (and eventual villain of the strip), Dr. G. Oscar Boom (G.O. Boom), was the lucky man whom Wonmug sent back to the age of dinosaurs to retrieve a specimen or two. Instead, Oscar comes back with Oop. When Wonmug says, “That’s impossible. There were no cave men in the time of the dinosaurs.”



Oscar ‘s reply is succinct, but stirring, and may even serve as a slogan for all comics: “Behold the impossible.”

And with that, Oop’s many exploits as a stranger in strange lands begin.

Hamlin’s art is delightful. His dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals are exquisite, his versions of the many exotic settings for Oop’s unique. His love for history, geology and paleontology are evident. His art is dynamic and detailed, notable for its meticulous cross-hatching, but fun, too, as if Harold Foster and Larry Gonick had a baby. His Stone Age folks are cartoony, with their Popeye-like forearms and calves – Oola being a notable exception! -- but their contemporary dialogue and sensibilities and expressive faces make them just like you and me.

His layouts remind you of Eisner's work on The Spirit,


even the lettering contributes to the narrative, here as Oop disappears into time:


Just a beautiful, clever, fun strip. Its like will never be seen again in newspapers, that's for sure. I envy anyone plunging into them for the first time.


 

Grell just missed my list. He was #13, principally for his work on Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. Good to see him getting some love.

#10 is the brilliant Bill Watterson and his delightful Calvin & Hobbes.  His delightful strip of 6 year old Calvin and stuffed tiger Hobbes stylistically blends bits of Peanuts, Pogo, and Krazy Kat.  The strip feels right like a child's mind would probably feel.

He'll be getting some more.

Potter lasted all of two issues, but looking closer now, Perez got a lot of assists from Len Wein, who did the scripting on those early issues after Potter left. So yes, it looks like I'll have to temper my enthusiasm a few degrees. But only a few.