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SECRET ORIGINS
HOT STUFF The LITTLE DEVIL
HARVEY COMICS created a small publishing empire with the characters Casper the Friendly Ghost (Harvey bought Casper from Paramount), Spooky, the Tuff Little Ghost, and Wendy the Good Little Witch. Traditionally regarded as horror characters, Harvey transformed them into family-friendly funsters!
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The Harvey gang also included Little Dot, a girl with a fanatical obsession for dots, plus child duck Baby Huey, along with various cats, mice and crows. After Harvey created a TV series, each character got their own series of animated cartoons, starting in the late 1950s.
Harvey purchased the rights to the old "Paramount Studios Cartoons" in 1958,which were called Noveltoons, and rebranded them as Harveytoons. Reader, this is where Harvey's famous jester logo came from -- they bought him from Paramount! And NOVELTOONS became HARVEYTOONS...
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BELOW: Scenes from the classic Casper Harveytoon "Fright From Wrong," directed by Seymour Kneitel, and voiced by Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer and Sid Raymond. It debuted in movie theaters in 1956, and it has been shown on television countless times since then...
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In this bizarre little story, the Ghostly trio forces poor Casper to take "mean pills." These pills transform him into a little DEVIL...
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...complete with a pointy tail! |
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And evil devil Casper has only one thought: He is hell-bent on mutilating and torturing his three Ghostly foes. Even though they're ghosts, apparently they can still feel all kinds of pain. |
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Evil Casper attacks them with fire -- a hot iron -- tar and feathers -- and even... |
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A vengeful ghost who uses hedge clippers!
Who does THAT remind you of? |
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| Anyway, in the end, Casper chases the Ghostly Trio out of the house with a lawn mower. Then he addresses the viewer directly, and reveals that he never took the "mean pills" at all! He just pretended to, to teach the Ghostly trio a lesson! End of cartoon. |
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The Harveytoons were a huge hit! Everybody watched them... |
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So Harvey went looking for new characters to join their ever-expanding line, which really WAS "loved by millions." |
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Probably using "Evil Casper" as his main inspiration, HOT STUFF was created and first drawn by Warren Kremer, who altered his more realistic horrific style to Alfred Harvey's cartoony house style. |
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BELOW: Black Cat Mystery #37, July 1952, by Warren Kremer
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Black Cat Mystery #45 by Kremer, and Simpsons "Radioactive Man" parody. |
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Back to Hot Stuff! Here was the pitch: A baby devil who wears asbestos diapers, and carries a talking pitchfork he calls his "trusty trident"! Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It will never work. But it did! Here's the cover of HOT STUFF #1, from October 1957! |
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Hmmm... where did a certain "BRAT" get his inspiration from? |
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BELOW: Hot Stuff #21, cover by Warren Kremer |
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Howie Post on Hot Stuff
Warren Kremer drew most of the Hot Stuff covers, while Howie Post wrote and drew a majority of the interior stories.
"I really enjoyed working on Hot Stuff. He was a character that afforded lots of opportunities for pantomine. You could really exaggerate his characteristics and get a lot of laughs out of the guy. The stories in this book, drawn by Warren Kremer and myself, are still amusing and have stood the test of time. I am delighted to have added my contribution to this small part of comics history." —Howie Post |
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Howie Post created and drew the
short-lived caveman teenager series "Anthro" for DC. |
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BELOW: From Hot Stuff #85, by Howie Post, 1968. |
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BELOW: Ad for Hot Stuff #14, introducing a new, regular back-up feature for the book: Stumbo the Giant. I always hated Stumbo the Giant. I still do. But what do I know? He eventually got his own book!
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Spin-Off title "Devil Kids starring Hot Stuff" debuted in 1962... |
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BELOW: Devil Kids #66 cover by another longtime Hot Stuff artist, Ernie Colon.
Concept on left, finished cover on right. |
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| Hot Stuff never hung out with his fellow Harvey superstars much, until he teamed with Spooky and others to form the "Harvey Wise Guys" -- but only on the COVERS of these all-reprint digest books. The title lasted four issues. |
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The End of Harvey Comics
Alfred Harvey left Harvey Comics in 1982, and the compnay ceased regular publication -- but Hot Stuff, Casper and Wendy returned to the comic pages in "Casper and the Spectrals" (2009). This limited series was written by Todd Dezago, with art by Leanne Delgado and Kieran Cats. |
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A page featuring the updated Hot Stuff... |
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