Cro-Magnon man has never been as comical as he is in V.T. Hamlin's comic strip, Alley Oop. While we're all familiar with the "longest running caveman in comics," did you know that Alley Oop often forayed into the sci-fi realm, once even anticipating a major milestone in American history.

In a 1947 Sunday strip, Hamlin's scientist character, Doc Wonmug, sent Alley Oop on a space voyage in an experimental shuttle. His destination: the Moon! Twenty years before the 1969 U.S. space landing, Alley Oop featured its stars in an uncannily similar space travel situation, making the strip the first with sci-fi overtones to "predict" and/or "depict" a moon landing by spacecraft.

It's storylines like these, which fuse prehistoric themes with futuristic ones that have ensured Alley Oop's success for well over half a century. Just last year, Alley Oop celebrated its 70th birthday. Read more in our Scoop archives: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=3091&si=121.

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