My Wednesdays all this month have been consumed with running errands to Alexandria, which have been worsened by the fact that the AC in our car is dead. I’ve just spent a couple of hours in a car with windows rolled down and a roaring hot wind blowing past me. I’m slumped in a puddle of sweat right now.
OK, a distraction: anyone else remember the Hot Stuff comics? How about Wendy, the good little witch, and Casper, the friendly ghost? That’s the trinity that provided me with all of my theological training. It wasn’t any less contradictory and silly than the nonsense the Lutheran church tried to stuff me with, and it was more amusing and more ethical than anything in the Bible.
I got a strong Richie Rich vibe when the picture popped up.
I got a strong Richie Rich vibe when the picture popped up.
PZ, I hope you and Mary aren’t caught in this. I read that there were cyber attacks on water utility computer systems in Minn.
PZ, I sympathize with you. ‘It’s not just the heat it’s the humanidiocy’
Of course, if you lived here in scarizona the heat is over 110F for weeks and the humidity has climbed to 45%-50%. Not fun.
We’re at 32°C and 70% humidity. Definitely not fun at all.
Not only were those Hot Stuff comics ‘more amusing and more ethical than anything in the Bible’, they also didn’t portray and encourage genocide, incest, and a whole shitload of other obscenities that occur throughout the fiction work titled ‘the bible’
I must apologize for using the stupid ‘reaganomics’ measurement system. I should use the metric system more. Thanks for the gentle reminder.
Wendy, Casper, and Hot Stuff were all titles put out by Harvey Publications, which also produced Richie Rich.
Sure.
IIRC, Caspar the friendly ghost also had a Saturday morning TV show.
I also remember Archie comics and the cartoon strip Nancy.
It is easy since…they are both in my Bluesky feed and I read them every day.
Weird how memory works. I hadn’t thought of those three titles in a depressing number of decades. But all of a sudden, specific storylines, especially from Richie Rich, popped into my head. I think I was not in the Harvey Pub stage for very long before Superman and variations thereof, and the pantheon of Marvel superheroes (and my older brother’s under-the-mattress Playboy mags) had my full attention.
I loved Casper the Friendly Ghost.
I remembered it when my daughter brought me a mostly white Flame Point Siamese cat in 2003.
I named him Casper the Overly Friendly Cat. He demanded love and petting from everyone he met.
He passed away in 2019. He was a great cat, and much more moral than any Christian.
Didn’t the same publishers also produce “Dot” and “Lottie”?
Another Distraction: Alien Super Show
These three aliens look almost as huggable as Casper the Friendly Ghost
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“Fox’s New Red Scare Just In Time For The Midterms” | Ft. Melat Kiros
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=17FRGwkhPEc
I read them all, Wendy, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich and Casper as a kid. Stopped reading Casper though, was too lame for me. Received my Metallurgy Degree from DC Comics by reading Metal Man comic books.
It’s probably too hot to drive to Luverne to see the world’s tallest nutcracker.
You made me look up Little Lotta.
My mother would bring these comic books home from the grocery store. They were an impulse item by the register.
Another fun title was “Magnus, Robot Fighter”. Just page after page of this guy bashing apart robots. “Squeee!” they said, as he knocked off their heads with a baseball bat.
@ ^ PZ Myers : Squeee!?
Isn’t that usually considered a noise of joy?
It’s a bit surprising no one ever did a Magnus movie or TV series, but I suppose the complexity and budget for doing the robots was too much of a barrier. An animated series would be a much better idea, but that never happened.
I was an equal opportunity comic book reader back in the day. Whenever I scraped up a dime I’d ride my bike to the Pak-A-Sak to peruse the comic book carrousel. I had loads of Superman and Batman, but preferred the new guys on the block like the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern and the Hulk. I also had a soft spot for Weird tales and practiced witchcraft on the side having been ordained in the black arts by watching Twilight Zone and zombie movies. I also liked Hot Stuff, Felix the Cat (who my mother thought was subversive for some reason and forbade me from reading much less buying Felix, but I did, anyway. More about dear Mother later.) Scrooge McDuck and the nephews, Richie Rich, L’il Audrey and even Nancy. I had them all.
Sadly, it all got burned up including my Amazing Spider Man No. 1. Yes, it was new, sold for a dime and Spidey was just another super powered hero, radiation, blah blah. Everything was radiation in the 60’s.
I don’t recall what offense I committed. It was either murdering the family next door, shooting a porno film with the babysitter in my bedroom or conjuring a demon in the living room on Easter morning, but whatever, Mom burned them all. I had a closet full of comics all sorted by genre. Stacked, it might have been 12-feet tall. All burned to ash in the fireplace.
And, just think, after all that trouble I turned our sort of normal … ish.
The Harvey Comics entry at Wikipfft reveals how little I knew of their offerings.
How could I have forgotten Baby Huey? How could I never have heard of Girl Commandoes or Sooper Hippie???
Right there with you, Doc Bill.
My mother shredded my prom dress because she didn’t like the guy who had asked me to prom!
I loved the old Harvey comics. Especially when I could snag one of their digests that featured all the different characters. I really loved Stumbo. I kind of identified with him as a gentle but naive giant trying to do his best.