The Harvey Girls - 480 pages of comics featuring Little Audrey, Little Dot, and Little Lotta

Little Dot is about 9 years old and, like artist Yayoi Kusama, she is obsessed with dots and paints them on every surface within reach of her brush or pencil. Little Lotta is an insatiable trencherman who is unaware of her superhuman strength. Little Audrey is a blithe dilettante who casually outperforms adults of all professions. All three fiercely independent girls had their very own comic books in the 1950s and 1960s. I read many stories starring Audrey, Dot, and Lotta as a youngster, and I was delighted when Dark Horse reprinted the best of these comics in a giant, brick-heavy anthology called The Harvey Girls: Little Audrey, Little Dot, and Little Lotta a couple of years ago.

My 9-year-old daughter can't get enough of this book. She has read it over and over again. The only part she skips is the informative introduction by cartoon historian Jerry Beck, which I greatly enjoyed. It was fun learning about the writers and artists behind these books. Harvey's house style (they also did Casper and Richie Rich) is deeply weird, but also slick and appealing. These guys were master draftsmen who cared a great deal about the quality of their work, and I can easily spend hours poring over the pages of this book.

After the jump: a couple of spreads from the book (it's mostly black and white, but there are about 80 pages in color).

Buy The Harvey Girls: Little Audrey, Little Dot, and Little Lotta on Amazon

• 400 page Casper anthology coming in April
• Harvey comic book covers from the 60s

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  But….where’s the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe?

• [Stefan Jones]

  Oh yeah! I read a fair amount of Harvey stuff as a kid. Mom didn’t trust the superhero stuff for me or my siblings.

  Normally I wouldn’t go out and choose one of the girl-hero comics, but several of the outlets that sold Harvey comics sold them in bagged collections. You got two or three books, of which only the front one was identifiable. So, you’d get Sack Sack or Hot Stuff paired with Little Lotta or Wendy the Witch. I had no problem reading them once I got ‘em, though.

  * * *
  Someday I’ll have to re-submit my writeup of Clarissa, a sporadic comic about a bitter, angry girl who might be mistaken, outside of the house, as a Harvey Comics rival / villain character. But she has a reason to be bitter and angry. An utterly heartbreaking thing.

• [Cherish Hellfire]

  Little Lotta was only comic I was allowed to have as a kid. I’d sneak my brothers hero comics, but Little Lotta was the only one that my mom sanctioned. I don’t think I’d be the kind of woman I am today if I hadn’t been exposed to a strong feminine archetype, and in the 70′s, there simply weren’t many.

• [Henry Pootel]

  Not to be confused with the Wharvey Gals

• [robuluz]

  “The only part she skips is the informative introduction by cartoon historian Jerry Beck, which I greatly enjoyed.”

  Heh heh heh. Stupid informative introduction….

• [greenberger]

  Wow, this is a great find- almost 500 pages for 8 bucks (used.) thanks for the tip! On a similar level, I heartily recommend “Sugar and Spike” comics by Sheldon Mayer, though the reprint book is quite a bit more expensive… but the writing and artwork is top notch!

• [Luke Temple Walsh]

  Thanks for the pointer. Wish it was all in color though.