“Hot Stuff was the third, last, and least famous of a series of Harvey Comics characters designed as cute versions of beings traditionally regarded as horrors,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
The least famous, perhaps, but the most entertaining, I thought — certainly more fun than those rather dreary goody two-shoes Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch.
Like Casper’s cousin Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Hot Stuff was a hobgoblin whose cuteness was spiced up by devilment.
“Hot Stuff the Little Devil 1, where the li’l imp made his debut, was dated October 1957,” Markstein noted. “His creation is officially attributed to Alfred Harvey, one of the owners of Harvey Comics, though much of the early tone of the series was set by cartoonists Howard Post, who did a majority of the stories, and Warren Kremer, who drew most of the covers. The comic’s long-running back-up feature, Kremer’s Stumbo the Giant, made its first appearance in #2. Hot Stuff was spun off into a second title, Hot Stuff Sizzlers, in 1960; a third, Devil Kids Starring Hot Stuff, in 1962; and even, briefly, a fourth, Hot Stuff Creepy Caves, in 1974.”
“Certainly the success of Casper — another fanciful creature based on the otherwise unsavory underworld of the dead — was an influence on the Harvey staff,” noted comics historian Jerry Beck. “One year before Hot Stuff’s debut, Famous Studios released a Casper animated short, Fright From Wrong (1956, written by Larz Bourne), in which the Ghostly Trio force the Friendly Ghost into downing some ‘mean pills.’ This turns Casper into his polar opposite, a raging red devil aching to wreak revenge. To this day, it’s the closest thing to a Hot Stuff animated cartoon.”
Given their corporate taste for supernatural cuteness, I always kind of wondered why Harvey Comics never licensed Mary Chase’s famed pooka for a comic. A six-foot-tall invisible rabbit would have seemed a natural fit.
He was, after all, named “Harvey.”
