Alley Oop


Alley Oop is a syndicated comic strip created December 5, 1932, by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association. Hamlin introduced a cast of characters, and his story lines entertained with a combination of adventure, fantasy, and humor.
Alley Oop, the strip's title character, was a sturdy citizen in the prehistoric kingdom of Moo. He rode his pet dinosaur Dinny, carried a stone war hammer, and wore only a fur loincloth. He would rather fight dinosaurs in the jungle than deal with his fellow countrymen in Moo's capital and sole cave-town. Despite these exotic settings, the stories were often satires of American suburban life.

Major characters

Minor characters

Story

The first stories took place in the Stone Age and centered on Alley Oop's dealings with his fellow cavemen in the kingdom of Moo. Oop and his pals had occasional skirmishes with the rival kingdom of Lem, ruled by King Tunk. The names Moo and Lem are 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 storylines: A time machine was invented by 20th-century scientist Dr. Elbert Wonmug, who bore a resemblance to the Grand Wizer. The name Wonmug was a bilingual pun on Albert Einstein; "ein" is German for "one", and "Stein" is a type of drinking mug in addition to being the word for "stone". The name of his assistant and rival Oscar Boom is derived from the words Nobel Prize: Oscar = Prize, and Boom after Alfred Nobel also pretty girlfriend Ooola's name was the Stone Age predecessor to the phrase "Ooo-la-la."
Oop was transported to the 20th century by an early test of the machine. He was not upset by the incident and apparently did not find modern society to be different from his own. He became Dr. Wonmug's man in the field, embarking on expeditions to various periods in history, such as Ancient Egypt, the England of Robin Hood, and the American frontier. Oop met historical or mythical figures as Cleopatra, King Arthur, and Ulysses in his adventures. In addition to the time machine, other science-fiction devices were introduced. Oop once drove an experimental electric-powered race car and, in the 1940s, he traveled to the Moon. During his adventures, he was often accompanied by his girlfriend Ooola, and by the sometimes-villainous, sometimes-heroic G. Oscar Boom, Dr. Wonmug's rival and occasional partner. Laboratory assistant Ava Peckedge joined the cast in recent years.

Syndication history

Alley Oop's name derived from the "let's go" phrase allez, hop!, used as a cue by French gymnasts and trapeze artists. Initially, Alley Oop was a daily strip which had a run with the small syndicate Bonnet-Brown, from December 5, 1932, to April 26, 1933. Beginning August 7, 1933, the strip was distributed by NEA syndicate, and the early material was reworked for a larger readership. The strip added a full-page Sunday strip, 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, and newspapers were offered a third-of-a-page version that dropped panels, so more strips could fit on a page.
When Hamlin retired in 1971, his assistant Dave Graue took over. Graue had been assisting Hamlin since 1950 and had been creating the daily solo since July 15, 1966, although co-signed by Hamlin. The last daily signed by Hamlin appeared December 31, 1972, and his last signed Sunday was April 1, 1973. From his North Carolina studio, Graue wrote and drew the strip through the 1970s and 1980s until Jack Bender took over as illustrator, starting December 31, 1991. Graue continued to write the strip until his August 2001 retirement. Four months later, on December 10, 2001, the 75 year-old Graue was killed in Flat Rock, North Carolina, when a dump truck hit his car. From 2001 to September 1, 2018 Alley Oop Sunday and daily strips were drawn by Jack Bender and written by his wife Carole Bender. In January 2019, writer Joey Alison Sayers and artist Jonathan Lemon took over the comic.
At its peak, Alley Oop was carried by 800 newspapers. Today, it appears in more than 600 newspapers. The strip and albums were popular in Mexico and in Brazil. In 1995, Alley Oop was one of 20 strips showcased in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative United States postage stamps.
Alley Oop's Sunday page had a number of different toppers over the course of its run, including: Dinny's Family Album, Foozy's Limericks, Prehistoric Cut-Outs in Modern Dress, Fragments, Scientists Say, Odds 'n' Ends, Story of a Dinosaur Egg, and Foozy's Foolosophies.

Licensing and promotion

In 1978, Alley Oop was adapted to animation as a segment of Filmation's Saturday morning cartoon series Fabulous Funnies, appearing intermittently alongside other comic-strip favorites: The Captain and the Kids, Broom-Hilda, Moon Mullins, Smokey Stover, and Nancy.
In 2008, "to celebrate Alley Oop's 75th year," the Benders conducted a contest for "Dinosaur Drawings from Our Young Readers". The entry Tyrannosaurus rex holding a banner wishing "Happy Birthday" to Alley Oop, by 12 year-old Erin Holloway of Hammond, Louisiana, was published in the comic strip on January 17, 2009.
In 2002, Dark Horse Comics produced a limited-edition figure of the character in a brightly illustrated tin container. Alley Oop was issued as statue #28 — part of their line of Classic Comic Characters collectibles.

In popular culture

The long-running success of the strip made the character a pop culture icon referred to in fiction, pop music and dance:
Many Alley Oop daily and Sunday strips have been reprinted by Dragon Lady Press, Comics Revue, Kitchen Sink Press, Manuscript Press, SPEC Books, Dark Horse Comics, the Menomonee Falls Guardian, and TOR Publications. The following titles are all by V. T. Hamlin unless otherwise noted: