Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop

Directed by Max Allan Collins (2005) ***

The American comic strip of the 20th century is a goldmine that’s been superficially explored. Only a tiny few classic strips have been reprinted in their entirety (Peanuts, Dick Tracy, Krazy Kat, etc.). Most others have been partially reprinted or not reprinted at all. According to Wikipedia, “There were more than 200 different comic strips and daily cartoon panels in American newspapers alone each day for most of the 20th century, for a total of at least 7,300,000 episodes.” That’s each day; as most strips eventually died and were replaced by new ones, it’s almost incalculable how many different strip titles there were over the course of the century.

An aside: That’s why comics historian Bill Blackbeard’s attempts to salvage the artform were and are so important. Starting in the late ’60s, when libraries nationwide were trashing their original newspaper collections in favor of blotchy, B&W microfiche, unusable for quality publishing and appreciation, Blackbeard began a nationwide search of original newspaper comic strip sections before they were
destroyed, culminating in a collection of 2.5 million clippings, tear-sheets and comic sections, spanning the years 1894 to 1996. This collection, containing many of the only physical copies of many strips that exist, has been an endless source of research material and book reprint material. The collection now resides in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus, Ohio.

When publisher Fantagraphics reprinted the complete Charles Schulz Peanuts, a physical copy of one particular daily strip initially could be found nowhere and had to be carefully recreated. If perhaps the most popular comic strip on Earth was in danger of being found incomplete, you can imagine the fate of the many hundreds of more obscure, earlier strips, incomplete forever, due to the newspapers they were published in having been destroyed.

All of this is to say that V.T. Hamlin’s whimsical Alley Oop is one of the strips that would most benefit from a complete reprinting, and Max Allan Collins’ documentary makes a convincing case why. The strip was created in 1932 by an artist who can only be described as a rugged individualist: the survivor of a poison gas attack as a soldier in WWI, a journalist, a sign painter, an animator, window dresser, card writer, movie projectionist, photographer and boxer, who never stayed in one place long.

Taking place in the prehistoric kingdom of Moo, Alley Oop was drawn in a pleasing style that was both cartoony and realistic, a method also used by fellow cartoonist Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy). Created when there was a swell of public interest in dinosaurs, the strip would feature facts about the real dinosaurs and starred a varied cast with all the gossipy culture and intrigue of a small mid-western town. Time-traveling became a later concept in the strip, giving readers perhaps their first introduction to Shakespeare and other historic figures.

Collins, who took over writing the Dick Tracy strip from creator Chester Gould in 1977, has created a documentary comic strip fans won’t want to ignore. Hamlin’s life and career are fascinating, though his later adversarial relationship with his understudy, Dave Graue, show just how sadly isolated and territorial Hamlin was. The doc interviews Graue at length; he died in a car accident shortly after filming.

Collins also interviews other comics creators, including Will (The Spirit) Eisner, underground cartoonist Trina Robbins, publisher Denis Kitchen, who printed three beautiful volumes of the strip, and many more. Though the doc is short, the VCI DVD contains a wealth of supplementary material, including two different commentary tracks, a 45-minute-long interview with Eisner, a panel discussion and a TV interview with the strip’s current creators.

Although I recommend the DVD, I must fault Collins on incessantly using music in the background, an annoying feature impossible to get rid of when trying to concentrate on those being interviewed.

Note: The Alley Oop daily strip is being reprinted in the long-running Comics Revue magazine.

—Michael R. Neno, 2017 September 18