Hot Stuff

« It’s quiet snow that I remember best… snowfall and Brahms on November nights. » — Rod Mckuen, Midnight Walk

While Autumn is easily my favourite season, much of its magic and colours are gone by the purgatory that is the month of November, and I find myself longing for snow to brighten the relentlessly longer and gloomier evenings.

And then, yesterday, as I was still mulling over this post, I woke up to this view from my front door.

Well, then! This post consists of a(nother) gallery of Warren Kremer‘s delightful Harvey covers, this time with a snowy theme. Never truly ‘ha ha’ funny, they get along on charm and crafty, limpid conception and execution.

This is **Little Dot no. 15** (Jan. 1956, Harvey). While most of Harvey’s efforts were channeled into their ‘Big Two’, Casper and Richie Rich, I always found these too bland (in the former’s case) or kind of deplorable (in the latter’s). I was more attuned to the line’s (slightly) bad boys, Spooky and Hot Stuff (Donald Ducks to Casper and Richie’s Mickey Mice), but really, the genuine interest resided in art director Kremer’s nimble design gymnastics and thematic acumen on Little Dot covers. By this time, these have improbably (but happily) inspired designers all over the globe. Nevertheless, a big juicy pox on the article’s author for failing to acknowledge Warren Kremer even *once*.

This is **Spooky no. 73** (Apr. 1963, Harvey). Those 1960s Harveys were so beautifully uncluttered in their design, with the bonus of Kremer’s marked and ongoing contempt for the Comics Code Authority stamp. Oh, and here’s our earlier selection of Spooky covers.

This is **Wendy, the Good Little Witch no. 22** (Feb. 1964, Harvey).

**Richie Rich no. 23** (May 1964, Harvey). What have you been eating, Richie?

This is **Little Audrey and Melvin no. 23** (Mar. 1966, Harvey). As you can see, Audrey’s sidekick Melvin shares a former fedora with our dear friend Forsythe Pendleton ‘Jughead’ Jones. That particular *chapeau* is called a Whoopee Cap.

This is **Richie Rich no. 55** (Mar. 1967, Harvey).

This is **Casper, the Friendly Ghost no. 116** (Apr. 1968, Harvey). Variations on skiing through solid objects is quite the cartooning wellspring.

This is **Little Audrey and Melvin no. 39** (Apr. 1969, Harvey).

This is **Hot Stuff, the Little Devil no. 93** (Oct. 1969, Harvey). For more Hot Stuff covers, check out *Who Will Change the Devil’s Nappy?*

This is **Little Lotta no. 89** (Apr. 1970, Harvey). And they didn’t find the local children’s mangled bodies until the following spring thaw.

-RG

« Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk. » — Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine (1980)

Another week, another heat wave… I had something else in the pipeline for this week, but the canicular conditions brought to mind Hot Stuff The Little Devil (heat rises!) and his creator Warren Kremer‘s monumental parade of beautifully conceived and crafted calefaction variations.

As you may already know, the Harvey Comics stable consists, in the main, of one-note characters erected upon the visual template of licensed 1940s animation properties Casper the Friendly Ghost (Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, Spooky) for the boys, and Little Audrey (Little Dot, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Pearl) for the girls.

CasperRichieA — Would I kid you? (truthfully, I might). There’s even a meme about it.

We’ve already presented cover galleries from Spooky and Little Dot (as well as a Hallowe’en-themed array), and it’s now Hot Stuff’s turn to toast and roast. Though we’ve both been rather dismissive of the contents of Harvey Comics, I must point out that if there is a specific series that burns brighter than its brethren do, it’s Hot Stuff’s… at least during the line’s creative peak, the 1960s. Here’s an example of a good one.

Each cover is the brainchild and handiwork of Harvey’s indefatigable resident genius and art director, Warren Kremer. Obviously, one man does not a company make, and his able colleagues Howie Post, Ernie Colón, Sid Couchey and Sid Jacobson were hardly lightweights or slouches… but Kremer was the cover generator.