Christmas Miracle #2 -- New Kids on the Block #4

One of the things I love about comics is that they're basically a snapshot of a moment in time. They had ads in them, letters pages, and of course stories, that are all immediately of their time. I don't think I've ever felt that as hard as I have with New Kids on the Block #4, our second piece of Christmas cheer for 2014.

So why are there New Kids on the Block comics? Because these guys were ridiculously popular. They were trendsetters who basically defined what the 1990s, or at least the early 1990s, was going to become. It's hard to understand now, because they're little more than a punchline to jokes about the era -- but people really BELIEVED in this stuff back in 1991. And I mean 'believed' as literally as possible.

But we'll get to that in due time.

Richie Rich: It's funny because he's RICH.

See? It's funny because he's  rich.

So we're back to Harvey comics, and maybe I should explain why we even came here in the first place. I used to read Harvey comics when I was a kid. I loved them. I especially loved Casper and Hot Stuff -- and in fact part of my early learning to draw was copying and tracing images from old Harvey comics. I adored this material. I even liked their most popular character of all -- Richie Rich.

But then, fairly recently, after about 25 years of not bothering with Harvey comics I had another encounter with them. It was actually really neat -- I bought a Casper  trade paperback. It was a neat nostalgic trip, reading Casper stories, seeing them evolve... but... I didn't just leave it there, did I?

I had to read some Richie Rich too, didn't I?

Let's talk about Harvey Comics.

It's funny because he's RICH.

Harvey Comics, now that's a blast from the past, right? They did all those characters you know, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff the Little Devil and... uhhh... others, right? Little Dot?

Yup, that's them. Harvey were a straightforward comics publishing house until they started licensing the characters of Famous Studios, and of course their biggest hit Casper the Friendly Ghost. Harvey Comics really was the house that Casper built. Animators became comic artists, and the publishers developed a huge range of Casper comics -- as well as creating a whole range of comics based on other Famous Studios characters like Little Audrey and Baby Huey.

Then in 1949 came Harvey's in-house creations like Little Dot. Little Dot was a little girl obsessed with dots. She was so successful that she launched a bunch of spin-offs like Richie Rich and Little Lotta. All of these characters were made in the Casper vein; they were family friendly, they were mono-maniacs and they were drawn in Harvey's house style of giant heads and fat legs.

Oh yeah, and they all suck.