Alley Oop’s Oil Roots
Caveman cartoonist Victor Hamlin once worked as an oilfield cartographer in Permian Basin.
The widely popular Depression Era newspaper comic strip character Alley Oop began in the imagination of a young Texas cartographer who drew Permian Basin oilfield maps.
The club-wielding Alley Oop caveman appeared for the first time in the summer of 1933 when Victor Hamlin, a former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter, published fanciful tales about the Stone Age Kingdom of Moo. Hamlin began syndicating his daily cartoon in the Des Moines Register in Iowa.
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