V. T. Hamlin - Alley Oop Begins

Alley Oop Begins

Back in Perry, Hamlin began thinking about those dinosaurs and started drawing a comic strip titled The Mighty Oop. However, he was not pleased with what he had created and instead of sending it to a syndicate, he destroyed it. A year later, he tried again, submitting Alley Oop to a small syndicate, Bonnet-Brown, which launched the strip as a daily, beginning December 5, 1932. A few months later, Bonnet-Brown collapsed, bringing the strip to an abrupt end. However, NEA picked it up, and it started again on August 7, 1933. Success led to a Sunday strip, added on September 9, 1934.

Dorothy Hamlin also worked on the strip, creating color roughs and contributing story ideas, including the important plot device of time travel, introduced April 5, 1939.

Hamlin wrote and drew Alley Oop with the help of his assistant, Dave Graue, until his retirement in 1971. When Hamlin retired because of failing eyesight, Graue took over full time. Graue had been assisting Hamlin since 1950, and he had been doing the daily solo since 1966, although it was co-signed by Hamlin. The last daily signed by Hamlin appeared December 31, 1972, and his last signed Sunday strip was April 1, 1973.

From his studio in North Carolina, Graue wrote and drew the strip through the 1970s and 1980s until Jack Bender took over as illustrator in 1991. Graue continued to write the strip until his August, 2001 retirement; on December 10, 2001, the 75-year-old Graue was killed in Flat Rock, North Carolina when a dump truck hit his car. The current Alley Oop Sunday and daily strips are drawn by Jack Bender and written by his wife Carole Bender.

The Hamlins moved to Sarasota, Florida after his retirement. He wrote his autobiography, The Man Who Walked with Dinosaurs and a novel The Devil's Daughter. Four Rivers is his fishing memoir.

Dorothy Hamlin died in 1985, and V.T Hamlin died in Brooksville, Florida in 1993 at the age of 93.

Read more about this topic:  V. T. Hamlin

Famous quotes containing the word begins:

    Remembering that when not a very great man begins to be mentioned for a very great position, his head is very likely to be a little turned, I concluded I am not the fittest person to answer the questions you ask.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)