Harvey Comics has produced a great bunch of characters and in this blog post, I'm going to reminisce about some of my favourite ones. I'm writing this without any comic books nearby to refer to, so I'm relying on my memory to serve me well.
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| Dot and her DOTS!! |
The first to come to mind is Little Dot Polka, the little girl with the unhealthy obsession with dots. Yes, DOTS!! She She painted them on everything she had, wore dot printed clothing all the time, did anything she had to to surround herself in them. She also had bags full of them, boxes full of them, and a closet full of them. To this day, I am intrigued as to what exactly these physical dots were?!?! They appeared to be flat black round discs of some sort. Wha?? Where did she get them?? She found them everywhere she went!! And much to her father's chagrin, she never ceased bringing more of them into the house. What were they?? On the cover of the comic shown here, it appears as though she glued them onto her dress and the wind blew them off, so I guess they weren't very heavy. Dot's father was always around more than her mother was. He was a short tempered guy who would fly off the handle all the time, fed up with Dot's dottiness and their house full of dots; however, it would never take long for Dot to charm her way back into Dad's heart and she would henceforth resume her obsession of adding more and more of those flat black dots to her collection.
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Little Lotta was a great character too. She was Little Dot's best friend, probably because she was too busy eating to notice what a nutcase Dot was. Lotta's obsession was with food, and the more she ate, the stronger she became! She wasn't very smart, but she was good natured, and always willing to help out by using her super strength. The best part of the Little Lotta stories was her little boyfriend Gerald's great one word reactions. Gerald was a meek boy with glasses so thick you couldn't see his eyes, who always wore a hat and a big bow tie. Time and time again Lotta would do her super stunts for his benefit. Things such as laying a tree across a road to stop traffic so that Gerald could cross to the other side without getting hit, or lifting up a huge boulder so that Gerald could retrieve the marble he had dropped. Yet every time Lotta performed these deeds of super strength to help him, he would catch me off guard by responding with a weak "gosh" or "gee". Ha ha ha, Gerald! What a riot!!
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| Little Lotta |
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| Gerald |
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Who can forget Richie Rich, "The Poor Little Rich Boy"? The guy who was wealthy beyond belief who lived in the most over-the-top mansion imaginable with a seemingly limitless supply of servants at his beck and call at all times? The guy who chose himself a very average girlfriend, Gloria, who hated extravagant gifts and the "showiness" of wealth? The guy whose two best friends, brothers Freckles & Pee Wee Friendly, wore patched up clothing and lived in a shack? I CAN'T!!!
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| Richie and Gloria |
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| Freckles and Pee Wee | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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5 comments:
Hello again, I don't know as much about Harvey comics as some other publishers, but I did somehow end up with a stack of Richie Rich, Casper, Sad Sack and Dot somehow when I was in primary school. Comic distribution was totally random in the UK, with American comics appearing in bizarre groupings in tiny local shops such as "The Fishing Tackle" where they were sold alongside bait and mussels in the microscopically small Scottish fishing village where I grew up. No two deliveries were the same and I assume one of these must have been Harveys. I never saw an Archie comic until I was well into my twenties (that whole two girls on the go at once thing does not work best first approached from an adult perspective). Anyway, what I liked about Harvey was that the comics came in such a bewildering series of combinations. The same characters seemed to turn up in all the titles to some degree, no matter whose name was on the cover. Also, whichever way you looked at it, one of their main characters was rather dead, happy or not. Plus they were prone to publishing my main weakness, the giant size issue. Before American comics started printing special UK issues the comics were stamped at point of import with a price, and clearly the import clerks could be bothered sorting out which of a batch had thirty, sixty or (the pinnicale) 100 pages, often stamping them all the same price, generally around 7 pence. Cheap as dirt. DC changed almost all their titles to "100 pages for 60 cents" for about five minutes in the early seventies and it is still possible I might be buried with these issues because I love them so much.
Ach, I have ruined my post by missing out the word not as in "...the import clerks could not be bothered sorting out...". The shame.
I love little dot! I want a little dot shirt now!
Hi Raekerr! Thanks for sharing such great memories. I know what you mean about the confusing Harvey comic book guest appearances. I remember one Richie Rich story where Richie was having a birthday party and Little Dot and Little Lotta were in attendance. Why? It wasn't explained. I didn't even think they lived in the same town, let alone know one another. The writers loved to mix it all up from time to time and make us wonder. Great fun!
Oldest Daughter Admirer- anyone who wants to wear a Little Dot t-shirt is as dotty as Dot herself!!
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