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It was, however, Oop’s girlfriend, Ooola, who–in effect–revolutionized comic art. Most women in newspaper comic strips at the time were essentially sexless. Wilma Deering, Buck Rogers’ female companion, usually wore riding pants. Only her name indicated she was female until much later. Blondie Boop-a-doop, who later married Dagwood Bumstead, was a typical 1920s boyish-figure flapper. Only Nina Clock, who became Mrs. Walt Wallet in the Gasoline Alley strip, had a suggestion of a figure. Ooola had curves! The sarong-like dress Hamlin put on her emphasized her voluptuous figure. In effect, Hamlin broke the ice.
When Flash Gordon came around considerably later, his female companion, Dale Arden, was not only buxom and curvaceous, she showed a lot more skin than Ooola did. Al Capp took it even farther with the scantily-clad, curvaceous gals of Dogpatch–Daisy Mae Scragg, Moonbeam McSwine, and Wolf Gal, among others. All these girls, though, were sexy only in appearance. In actions most of them were entirely innocent. It remained for Milton Caniff, in his first strip, Terry and The Pirates, later drawn by George Wunder, to create a female character that was not merely sexy-looking, but sexy-acting–the Dragon Lady.
Hamlin started it all with Ooola. The strip first appeared on December 5, 1932, and ran through January 3, 1933. Beginning on August 7, 1933, the strip began a continuous run that lasts even today, making Alley Oop the third-oldest continuous comic strip in the US. Only Gasoline Alley, which recently celebrated its 90th birthday, and Blondie are older.
