… on the psychiatrist’s couch, in a 7/12/11 cartoon by Canadian cartoonist (illustrator, graphic novelist, and children’s book author) Dave Whamond:
(#1) A cartoon about cartoon characters (from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson), with a character reversal — the tiger Hobbes is real, and the boy Calvin is his stuffed toy, though Hobbes fantasizes that the boy is real
( hat tip to Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook)
Information abut Whamond on his website. It took me a while to find him on the net, since Google was laser-focused on telling me about cartoonist V.T. Hamlin. From Wikipedia:
Vincent Trout Hamlin (May 10, 1900 – June 14, 1993) [born and raised in Perry IA], who preferred the name V. T. Hamlin, was an American comic strip cartoonist. He created the popular, long-run comic strip Alley Oop, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
(#2) Alley Oop Book One Dinny (1932-33)
About the strip, from the Univ. of Missouri special collections site. “75 Years of the Comic World of V. T. Hamlin”:
1933 was a big year for dinosaurs. The landmark film King Kong was released, featuring a giant ape from an uncharted island inhabited by dinosaurs. Two exhibits at the Chicago World’s Fair featured animatronic, roaring dinosaurs. And drawing on the popularity of these prehistoric creatures, a cartoon strip about a Stone Age caveman and his pet dinosaur Dinny was picked up by the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, and the world met Alley Oop.
Alley Oop is a comic strip created by V.T. Hamlin about the caveman Alley Oop and his friends. Alley lives in the Kingdom of Moo, whose residents include Alley’s female counterpart Ooola, his friend Foozy, King Guz, and the Grand Wizer, a witch doctor. Combining the physical comedy of vaudeville with the ongoing dramas of a small town, and setting it in a prehistoric world populated by dinosaurs both fierce and friendly, Hamlin set up Alley Oop for success from the beginning.
… Towards the end of the 1930s, Hamlin grew weary of the narrative limitations of a strip set solely in prehistoric times. His wife, Dorothy, came up with the idea to introduce a time machine, freeing Alley Oop from these constraints. In April of 1939, Alley and Ooola were transported out of Moo and into the 20th-century laboratory of Dr. Elbert Wonmug [read: Albert Einstein]. Alley was soon sent to Troy, participating in the stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Jumping through time, the strip’s characters have encountered many historic and literary characters over the years, including Cleopatra, King Arthur, Napoleon, Shakespeare, King Solomon, Robinson Crusoe, and Robert E. Lee.
And on the expression alley-oop (exploited by Hamlin): from OED3 (Sept. 2012) on alley-oop (as int., adv., n., adj.):
Etymology: < French allez-hop, interjection (19th cent. or earlier) < allez , imperative of aller to go (see allons int.) + hop, expressive word, of imitative origin (1652 as houp ; compare Middle French houper , verb (end of the 14th cent.); compare houp-la int.).
1st cite in English, as interjection: ‘Get up!’ ‘Go on!’ Used to encourage or draw attention to the performance of an acrobatic or other physical feat, esp. one involving a leap or lift upwards. [1st cite 1917 in Princeton Alumni Weekly]
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