<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Alley Oop proves that no matter how wrong it is scientifically, everybody loves dinosaurs and cavemen, and when sometime sports cartoonist and oil-patch roustabout V. T. Hamlin launched the Alley Oop daily newspaper comic strip on August 7, 1933 (the Sunday strip followed on September 9, 1934), dinosaur and caveman love proved once again to be a winning combination.

It was the heyday of the adventure strips and, with his stone-headed club and brontosaurus sidekick Dinny, Oop offered sprawling, brawling adventures as tribes of cavemen fought over territory and females. Oop’s own girlfriend, Oola, was often the prize in these battles. Oop wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but his courage, brawn, and a little timely intervention from Dinny were usually enough to save the day. Oop’s main stomping grounds were in the Valley of Moo, ruled over by King Guzzle with the help of his own Merlin, the rascally wizard called the Grand Wizer.

Eventually Hamlin felt that his prehistoric setting was just too limiting, and he decided to broaden the appeal of the strip by having Alley snagged by a time machine operated by Professor Elbert Onemug (a humorously vernacular translation of Einstein). Oop was soon traveling to the Middle Ages, where he became a spectacularly successful knight, and then to the Moon in a rocket designed by engineer G. Oscar Boom.

Hamlin wrote and drew the strip himself, dailies and Sundays, for years, eventually hiring an assistant, Dave Graue, in 1947. Their working relationship grew into a full collaboration, and Hamlin turned the strip over to Graue in 1973 when he retired. The strip continues today under the able stewardship of Jack and Carole Bender, who took over after Graue’s retirement in 2002 (Jack had been assistant on the strip for the previous decade).

There were a few Alley Oop animated TV cartoons included in a Saturday morning Archie show in the early 1970s, but never an animated feature, which is unfortunate given that Hamlin’s mature art and gorgeous coloring would have made a spectacular film. The most famous adaptation into other media, and perhaps the creation that keeps the name “Alley Oop” most in circulation today, is the classic rock hit of 1960 by the Hollywood Argyles, a pick-up group assembled by vocalist Gary Paxton (who later produced The Monster Mash).