Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Today in Comics History, August 10: Happy Hirthday, Herbert Hoover!

This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published February 22, 2010.

Born on this day: Herbert Hoover, inventor of the vacuum cleaner! I'm bettin' he's in lots of comic books, huh? I bet everybody knows who he is, right, Bruce Wayne in your snappy green hat? Say, where do you buy a green hat?

Batman: Scar of the Bat
from Batman: Scar of the Bat one-shot (DC, 1996), script by Max Allan Collins, pencils and inks (and colors?) by Eduardo Barreto, letters by Todd Klein




Hoover was born in 1874 and immediately matured to a middle-aged man with a receding hairline.


from Life Stories of American Presidents #1 one-shot (Dell, November 1957), pencils and inks by John Buscema

Oh okay, you've got me: he did have an adolescence as a waterboy (emulating his favorite screen actor, Adam Sandler) and a guy who licked football players. It's a Thrilling Fact! Well, you do you, Hoobert Heever.


from "Thrilling Facts" in Thrilling Comics #68 (Pines, October 1948)...you know, the one with the jungle goddesss listening to a portable radio on the cover. Creators uncredited and unknown.

Such a pleasant lookin' guy! I'm sure that exactly as in our '20s, the 1920s were set to be a period of unprecedented prosperty with one financial success for his adminstration after another!


from Life Stories of American Presidents #1

Newspapers don't look like that! Where's the headers on those pages? I guess they had to lay off the mastheads during the depression. They tried to get work in comic books, but no one would be interested in big screaming letters on newsprint then.

Although: surely as the months passed, the Depression didn't grow deeper?


How old is that Life Stories of American Presidents #1 comic book? So old that when it was published Herbert Hoover was still alive. I hope he reserved a copy at his local comic store.


How did he stay alive so long? Why, he kept in shape with the old-fasioned sport of Wii Tennis fishing!

Herbie #7
from Herbie #7 (ACG, February 1965), script by Richard Hughes as Shane O'Shea, pencils and inks by Ogden Whitney, letters by Ed Hamilton

After he died, Hoover back back to unlife as an evil zombie and fought Deadpool. As you do.


from Deadpool (2013 series) #4 (Marvel, March 2013), script by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn, pencils and inks by Tony Moore, colors by Val Staples, letters by Joe Sabino

Uh...yep. An' that's all I got for Herbert Hoover. Happy birthday, Hoovster!

4 comments:

Erin Palette said...

That last panel looks like Charles Xavier is talking to Ronald Reagan.

SallyP said...

Hoover gets a bad rap. For one thing, he mostly inherited a helluva mess from Calvin Coolidge, who missed the Great Depression by the skin of his teeth, but doesn't get any of the blame.

Wait...this sounds familiar.

Dan McDaid said...

Eduardo Barreto, though. Wow.

Blam said...

Wow. Even the apples were unemployed (and selling themselves off dirt cheap)!
Those panels from Life Stories of American Presidents sure look to have Ben Oda lettering, by the way; that guy was everywhere.