COMIC BOOK (SUPERHEROES) THAT TIME FORGOT: SUPER-HIP!

KC Carlson

KC Carlson


by KC Carlson

It’s hard to believe that comedian Bob Hope was ever popular enough with kids to headline an ongoing comic book aimed at them. Granted, Hope was one of the most successful entertainers in history, appearing in films, radio, television, vaudeville, and on Broadway. As well as frequently hosting the Academy Awards (wish he was still around today), he was a noted humanitarian and staunch supporter of the U.S. Armed Forces, fronting 57 tours for the USO between 1942 and 1991.

The Adventures of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis #11

The Adventures of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis #11


DC Comics was Hollywood crazy back in the 1950s, most likely due to DC editor Whitney Ellsworth and his contacts made during the time that he spent as the producer and story editor of The Adventures of Superman TV show. That eventually evolved into him being DC’s “movie studio contact” during this time. DC published comics featuring stars like The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, beginning in 1952. (The title was shortened to The Adventures of Jerry Lewis when the comedy team split up in 1956. It’s been fatuously speculated that Martin didn’t get his own solo comic book because it probably wouldn’t have been approved by the Comics Code.) Other DC star comics included Pat Boone, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, cowboy Jimmy Wakely, cowgirl Dale Evans Comics, and The Adventures of Alan Ladd (tough guy).

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #21

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #21


There were also comics based on popular radio, TV, and film programs such as A Date With Judy, Gang Busters, Mr. District Attorney, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Sgt. Bilko, Sgt. Bilko’s Pvt. Doberman, and The New Adventures of Charlie Chan. The Fox and the Crow and Real Screen Comics were based on popular animated shorts. Miss Beverly Hills of Hollywood (in its own title and an occasional back-up feature in The Adventures of Bob Hope) had a fictional lead who met real-life movie stars.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

The Adventures of Bob Hope #33

The Adventures of Bob Hope #33


The Adventures of Bob Hope comic book ran from 1950 to 1968 for a total of 109 issues. The original artist was Owen Fitzgerald, and it’s likely that Cal Howard was the initial and ongoing writer for a time. It appears that these two creators provided the bulk of the Bob Hope stories in the first 60 issues, although exact credits are not available. Issue #61 features the debut of two artists who would be praised for their work on the Bob Hope feature: Mort Drucker (of MAD Magazine fame) on the lead story and Bob Oksner on the back-up. Both Drucker and Oksner previously had worked on non-Hope back-ups in earlier issues of the title. Drucker would produce dozens of Hope stories in the late 50s and early 60s. Oksner would later become closely associated with both this title and The Adventures of Jerry Lewis throughout the sixties, and it’s quite possible that he also wrote stories for both books around this time, until Arnold Drake began scripting them around 1964.

CHANGE OF DIRECTION

By The Adventures of Bob Hope #95, Drake and Bob Oksner were the regular team on the book, and actual credits were being provided with the stories. Prior to this, Drake had probably been writing it regularly for at least a year, with Oksner filling in occasionally for Drucker. (There also seems to be a couple of late-edition stories by Howard and Fitzgerald in this era — probably inventory being burned off.)

The Adventures of Bob Hope #95

The Adventures of Bob Hope #95


The Adventures of Bob Hope #95 was a turning point for the book, introducing several new characters and an ongoing (albeit loose) continuity to the series. Hope and his talking dog, Harvard Harvard III (introduced in #86, which I would guess to be a Drake creation), would be the only older characters going forward from this point, as the book was almost completely re-made, probably to stave off declining sales. The side effect of all these changes would be to make Hope pretty much a supporting character in his own title from this issue forward.

The new focal point for the series would be the super-powered alter ego of Tadwallader Jutefruce (a spoonerism for “fruit juice”), the son of one of Hope’s old college buddies, who was a star football player and ladies’ man. Tad is being sent to stay with Hope while his parents are traveling in Europe, and Bob is excited by the prospect — until he actually meets Tad and discovers he’s nothing like his dad. He speaks proper English, not 60s teen slang (or whatever Drake was writing as such). He’s not an athlete; always wears a blue suit, bow-tie, and cap; and doesn’t seem to know what to do around pretty girls such as Lisa, another new character. She’s a student at Benedict Arnold High School, where Tad will be attending while staying with Bob.

HORRORS!

The Adventures of Bob Hope #98

The Adventures of Bob Hope #98


The faculty at Benedict Arnold High School appear to have shambled over from the set at Universal Movie Studios. The Dean of the school has a coffin-like trunk in his office illuminated by candles and has random bats flying around. His name is Dr. Van Pyre, and of course, he looks like Bela Legosi. The coach has green skin, a flat head, bolts in his neck, and is named Franklin Stein. He very much dislikes to be compared to the movie monster that he obviously resembles. Chemistry professor Heinrich Von Wolfman speaks in a German accent, is short and hairy and looks like… oh, you already know. Biology teacher Miss Beverly Ghastly is a cross between Morticia Addams (from the famous Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons, first named by Addams when the cartoons became the TV show) and 1950s horror host Vampira (also inspired by the Addams character). Four issues later (in #98), the school’s driving instructor is introduced. He’s a mummy named “Crash” Vyctum. Most of these monsters would be prominently cover-featured on every issue of the comic until the last (#109). The movie monsters were hot in the 1960s, ya know.

As if there weren’t enough characters, there are also two students — billionaire teen Badger Goldliver and his moronic stooge Doltish — designed to cause trouble. They’re both bikers, but not Hell’s Angels-type bikers. They’re more like Eric Von Zipper and his inept crew from the early 60s Beach Party films. Their role in the stories is to cause trouble and/or torment Tad — which actually introduces the supposed new star of the book — Super-Hip!

HE’S SUPER-FREAKY er… HIPPY!

The Adventures of Bob Hope #99

The Adventures of Bob Hope #99


When Tad loses his temper, he starts trembling and shaking and sometimes spins in place, the prelude to a remarkable transformation into a character who calls himself Super-Hip! He’s dressed like a reject from 1960s London’s Carnaby Street, with tight-fitting purple jacket, white puffy shirt, bright green Hulk-colored pants (subtle!), and blue Beatle boots (with wings!). Facially, he sort of looks like a teenage Bob Hope (with a nose job) wearing a blond Beatle wig. (Or more accurately, he looks a lot like Rolling Stone Brian Jones in the mid-1960s.) It’s retroactively apparent that Super-Hip was a fashion icon for Austin Powers.

Super-Hip claims that he’s “The patron super-hero for all swingers! The mortal enemy of every super square!” His “war cry” is “Down With Lawrence Welk!” — soon modified to “Blech to Lawrence Welk!” If you’re young and don’t know who Lawrence Welk is, the Kristen Wiig character with the tiny hand (“Dooneese”) from SNL is performing on a parody of Welk’s long-running “champagne music” TV show. If you’re old and you somehow don’t know who Welk is, you should go ask Stan Freberg.

Super-Hip has a Super-Guitar (called “Soopy-Guitar” in the first appearance), which allows him to fly. It also has the magical power to transform him into anything that he can think of. Initially he turns into a giant razor to shave Badger bald, before turing into a bottle of “Wildest Root Cream Oil”, a parody of a popular hair care product of the era called Wildroot Cream Oil, for which Al Capp’s Fearless Fosdick character was a licensed “spokes-character” in the 1940s and 50s. (Don’t say you never learn anything reading these silly columns.) Meanwhile, Super-Hip also turns into a can of shaving cream, an ice cream scoop, and a jar of cherries. Later, he turns into a giant fan which blows most of Hope’s clothes off. (I often wonder if Hope ever actually read these comics?)

Super-Hip as a pitcher of maple syrup!

Super-Hip as a pitcher of maple syrup!


The big twist is that Tad has no idea that he was actually Super-Hip! Although Hope’s talking dog, Harvard Harvard III, knew the secret, but he wasn’t talking.

SCHOOL’S OUT. . . FOREVER!

The Adventures of Bob Hope #102

The Adventures of Bob Hope #102


Most of the stories revolved around Benedict Arnold High School and basic teenage plots — football games, forming rock bands, racing hot rods, surfing, summer jobs — all of which served to push Hope farther to the side in his own title. However, issue #99 does feature Bob attempting to impersonate Super-Hip. (You can see the suspenders holding up his skinny pants!) And we get a bit of “Wild in the Streets” (a 1968 teen exploitation film, based on a popular short story and expanded into a novella, called The Day It All Happened, Baby by Robert Thom.) when Super-Hip is elected President in #100. The cover of #102 implies that Super-Hip has invented a Radio-Controlled Girl at a Science Fair to show up Tad’s stereotypical Perpetual Motion Machine, built out of random junk. In #108, Tad tries to update his nerdish image with the expected wacky results. Lots more mostly nameless pretty girls are added to the cast for Oksner (and later Neal Adams) to draw. Hope’s not even on the cover of #108, except for his image in the book’s logo.

This is all pretty silly stuff, fueled by Oksner’s great cartooning (and pretty girls) and Drake’s have-to-read-it-to-believe-it faux hipster dialogue and insane plots. But it apparently held off cancellation for at least a couple of years, helped by frequent DC house ads pushing the early issues of the change. Eventually, the end came for comic book Bob Hope, Super-Hip, and all the gang with issue #109, cover-dated March 1968 (but on sale in early December 1967). Oksner moved on to Angel and the Ape and Stanley and His Monster before working on Supergirl, Lois Lane in Superman Family, and Shazam!

1968 was also the year that many of DC’s writers began asking for more rights, better pay, and health insurance. Arnold Drake is often mentioned as one of the “ringleaders” (at least by then-DC publisher Irwin Donenfeld) and was most likely ousted from DC for it. He co-created Deadman (with Jack Miller) before he left, but then he was off to Marvel and Gold Key (and a long, fun run on Little Lulu), among other brief assignments, including a handful of X-Men stories. Both Drake and Oskner passed away in 2007. Bob Hope lived to be 100 years old and passed away on July 27, 2003.

FOOTNOTES

The Adventures of Bob Hope #106

The Adventures of Bob Hope #106


Unbelievably, The Adventures of Bob Hope #106 was one of Neal Adams’ first full-length art jobs for DC Comics. (The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #101 probably edged it out as the first published.) Adams had been knocking around the industry for years, but he was only getting occasional single pages or fillers. Bob Hope editor Murray Boltinoff gave him the assignment to pencil and ink (including covers) for what would turn out to be the last four issues of the series. Interestingly, all four issues had no printed credits, which was unusual, as the series had regular credits (for artists and writers) for at least a couple of years previous. At the same time, Adams also penciled and inked four issues of The Adventures of Jerry Lewis (#101-104) and the covers for #102-104 (all also uncredited in the comics). Adams also worked on a couple of short stories for DC’s war books and an Elongated Man backup for Detective Comics around this time, as well as beginning his long stint providing covers for the various Superman-related books.

Another Bob Hope art anomaly: Apparently, Carmine Infantino penciled and inked issue #103. It looks really weird.

Super-Hip at the wedding of Elasti-Girl and Mento

Super-Hip at the wedding of Elasti-Girl and Mento


Super-Hip may have been completely forgotten (he wasn’t in any of DC’s various Who’s Who projects, for example), had it not been for one (and only one) non-Bob Hope Silver Age appearance. Super-Hip was in attendance at the wedding of Elasti-Girl and Mento in Doom Patrol v.1 #104 in 1966, in a story not-so coincidentally also scripted by Arnold Drake. Had he not appeared here, he may have been completely passed over by comics fans who only read DC’s superhero comics and skipped cool reads like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis.

Super-Hip also made two more modern showings. He makes a brief appearance in 2010’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold #15, teaming with Bats and Brother Power The Geek to battle the Mad Mod. And, courtesy of Keith Giffen, he also appears in 2011’s Doom Patrol #20, as an old friend of Cliff Steele (Robotman). Who isn’t? Cliff Steele is the Kevin Bacon of the (old) DCU.

God help us all if somebody tries to New-52-ify Super-Hip.

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KC CARLSON SEZ: Thanks to the sadly now-defunct Shinder’s of Minneapolis/St. Paul for my Bob Hope (and Jerry Lewis) collections. Shinder’s was a classic newsstand and comic dealer where you could find just about anything, if you were willing to get your hands dirty. Back in the 70s and 80s, Shinder’s always had “value bags” of up to 20 old reading-grade comics, random issues of the same titles on sale for reasonable prices. Every time I was in the store, I always picked up a bag or three when they had “obscure” titles like Bob Hope, or Jerry Lewis, or Millie the Model, or Swing With Scooter, or war, horror, or (rarely) romance titles all bundled together. Of course, eventually I had to track down the missing, in-between issues elsewhere, but that was part of the fun of collecting back then. I miss that.

WESTFIELD COMICS is not responsible for the stupid things that KC says. Especially that thing that really irritated you.

You can read more about Super-Hip here.

Classic comic covers from the Grand Comics Database.

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