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| (1957) |
Hot Stuff's gimmick of setting fire to things around him, often without any conscious decision to do so is pretty visual. It was much like Casper's constant walking into and through solid objects. Both characters don't fit into the natural world, nor do we expect them to do so. Whereas Casper is always nice and even downright a milquetoast of a character, Hot Stuff as we'd expect is a bit more inclined to lose his cool. Casper is white, the absence of color and Hot Stuff is bright brilliant red.
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| (1960) |
Harvey Comics Classics Volume Three Hot Stuff the Little Devil gives the reader another heaping of delightful Hot Stuff stories. The artist I most associate with Hot Stuff is Howie Post who brought a real flair to the standard Warren Kremer template for the broader Harveyverse. Hot Stuff never had the avalanche of titles that Casper and Richie Rich had, but he was without doubt a successful character for many years.
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| (This series not included -- just wanted to share an image.) |
It should be noted that Stumbo the Giant is featured somewhat in this compendium also since he spent most of time as a co-feature in the Hot Stuff miniverse which was somewhat isolated from the larger Harveyverse.
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Hot Stuff was always a visually stunning character to me expertly designed and drawn. As a kid I never really thought about him being an actual satanic devil, similarly I never thought of Casper being the ghost of a dead child. Although of course they were just a baby devil and child ghost, but for the time and with the rather devout attitude to religion it some parts of the US it was a brave decision to publish these characters. I read somewhere DreamWorks were doing a Hot Stuff movie.
ReplyDeleteHarvey was pretty adamant I guess that Casper was "born" a child ghost and had never been a living boy, so to avoid the obvious discomfort that might bring. (It's a lame assertion -- early cartoons from Paramount are set in graveyards and it's generally assumed Casper is risen. At least by me.) Hot Stuff was a devil, but before The Exorcist I think most folks had only vague notions of demons. But I was joking to someone the other day that Harvey's business model was based on a dead child's ghost, a satanic kid, and the totally non-ironic adventures of a one-percenter. I doubt you'd get too far with that today.
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