Alley Oop

For the basketball term, see Alley oop (basketball).

Alley Oop USPS stamp

Alley Oop is a syndicated comic strip, created in 1932 by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin. As of 2007, the strip was being produced by Carol Bender and Jack Bender. The strip is a mix of adventure, fantasy and humor. Alley Oop, the strip's namesake and leading character, was a sturdy citizen of the prehistoric kingdom of Moo who rode his pet dinosaur, Dinny, carried a stone war hammer, dressed in nothing but a pair of fur shorts, and obviously would rather fight dinosaurs in the jungle than deal with his fellow countrymen in Moo's capital (and only) cave-town. In spite of these exotic settings, the stories were mostly satires of American suburban life.

Story lines and other characters

V.T. Hamlin's Alley Oop for December 24, 1948.

The first stories centered on Alley Oop's dealings with his fellow cavemen -- his friend Foozy (who talks in rhyme) and his girlfriend Ooola, Moo's King Guzzle and Queen Umpateedle, the King's Grand Wizer and assorted citizens, plus his tame dinosaur Dinny. Oop and his pals had occasional skirmishes with the rival kingdom of Lem, ruled by King Tunk. The names Moo and Lem are apparent references to the fabled lost continents of Mu and Lemuria.

On April 5, 1939, Hamlin introduced a new plot device, which greatly expanded his choice of plot lines: a time machine, invented by the 20th-century scientist Dr. Elbert Wonmug, who bore a rather suspicious resemblance to the Grand Wizer. (The name Wonmug was a reference to Albert Einstein, since Ein Stein means "One Mug" in German.) Suddenly abducted to the 20th century by an early test of the machine, Alley Oop was hardly upset by the incident, and apparently did not find modern society to be any different from his own. He then became Dr. Wonmug's test pilot, embarking on expeditions to various periods and places in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Arthurian England and the American Old West. Oop accompanied Cleopatra, King Arthur and Ulysses in his adventures. In one series of strips, Oop drove an experimental electric-powered race car, and in the 1940s even traveled to the moon. In these expeditions he was often accompanied by his girlfiend Ooola, and by the sometimes villain, sometimes hero G. Oscar Boom (G.O. Boom), Dr. Wonmug's lab assistant. A new assistant, a woman named Ava, joined them in recent years.

Publication history

Alley Oop's name derived from the "let's go" phrase allez, hop!, used as a cue by French gymnasts and trapeze artists. V. T. Hamlin wrote and drew Alley Oop through four decades for NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association). Initially, Alley Oop was a daily strip which had a run from December 5, 1932 to January 3, 1933. Beginning August 7, 1933, the early material was reworked for a larger readership. The strip added a Sunday full page, on September 9, 1934. It also appeared in half page, tabloid and half tab formats, which were smaller and/or dropped panels. During World War II, the full page vanished due to the drive to conserve paper, and it was reduced to a third of a page. When V. T. Hamlin retired in 1971, his assistant Dave Graue took over. The last daily by Hamlin appeared December 31 1972, and his last Sunday was April 1 1973. From his studio near Caesar's Head, North Carolina, Graue wrote and drew the strip through the 1970s and 1980s until Jack Bender took over as illustrator in 1991. Graue continued to write the strip until his August, 2001 retirement; on December 10, 2001, the 75-year-old Graue was killed in Flat Rock, North Carolina when a dump truck hit his car. The current Alley Oop Sunday and daily strips are drawn by Jack Bender and written by his wife Carol Bender. Many Alley Oop daily strips, and a few Sundays, have been reprinted by Dragon Lady Press, Comics Revue, Kitchen Sink, Manuscript Press and SPEC Books. At its peak, Alley Oop was carried by 800 newspapers, and today it appears in more than 600 newspapers. The strip and albums were popular in Mexico (under the name Trucutú) and in Brazil (Brucutu).

Alley Oop in culture and entertainment

Ed Emshwiller's 1959 illustration of Philip José Farmer's "The Alley Man"

The long-run success of the strip made the character a pop culture icon referenced in both fiction and pop music:

• A thinly disguised Alley Oop was the central figure in Philip José Farmer's The Alley Man, a 1959 novella about the last Neanderthal who has survived into the 20th Century.
• The roaring, rutting, one-armed Old Man Paley who lives on the city dump and hunts the Old King's hat of power through its alleys, who guzzles beer and seduces social workers with equal facilities, is Alley Oop as seen by Eugene O'Neill.
• In 1960 Hamlin's character became the subject of Alley Oop, a song by Dallas Frazier which became a one-hit-wonder by the The Hollywood Argyles and by several other bands. (However, the lyrics' line "he got a big ugly club" woul be more appropriate for King Guzzle's wooden club than Oop's stone-headed war hammer.)
• An educated Neanderthal known as Alley Oop is a character in Clifford D. Simak's science fiction novel The Goblin Reservation (1968).
• In the 1970s, the song "Alley Oop" was used by the American choreographer Twyla Tharp in her ballet Deuce Coup .
• Alley-Oop was a segment in Filmation's 1970's animated series Fabulous Funnies alongside Broom-Hilda, Nancy and Sluggo and The Captain and the Kids.
• The Alley Oop football play was developed by San Francisco 49ers Y.A. Tittle and R.C. Owens in the late 1950s; and Owens himself got the nickname "Alley Oop".
• In 1995, Alley Oop was one of 20 strips showcased in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.

References

• Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop (2005), an award-winning documentary film by director-novelist Max Allan Collins, is narrated by Michael Cornelison and features interviews with Will Eisner and Dave Graue.

External links

• Alley Oop
• Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop
• Clark J. Holloway on Alley Oop
• Toonopedia: Alley Oop