Review by Jamie Coville

The beginning of the book has some writing about the History of Hot Stuff by Mark Arnold and Jerry Beck. After that we get 110 stories, most of it Hot Stuff but with some Stumbo the Giant and The Devil Kids thrown in. They were originally published between 1957 and 1966. Included are the first Hot Stuff issue which is great to see. Much of the stories are only 5 pages in length, some are just one pagers. Along the way we learn quite a bit about the little devil. His personality, limits to his abilities, his trident and more. I did read some Harvey Comics as a kid but I didn't really "know" the Hot Stuff character until I read this book. As a "bonus" we get Stumbo the Giant's first appearance as it was in Hot Stuff #3. For those that don't know, Stumbo the Giant was a personal favorite of Warren Kremer. He was the artist that created the Harvey House Style for their kids comics. Stumbo back up stories were common among the Harvey titles. He wasn't quite popular enough to have his own series but he did have a cult following and the Stumbo work is really good. As you might suspect the stories are quite simple and they are best read a bit at a time. The art is standard Warren Kremer style art. Clean, open, simple and done by a variety of artists including Kremer himself. It's easy to overlook how good this stuff is because we grew up reading it and don't consider it seriously. My only problem is the colour pages that are reprinted are quite yellow. It would have been nice if they found better copies to scan from or put some more work in cleaning up the art. Usually "best of" books don't quite fly with an audience that wants "complete" collections. But I doubt that many people want to read *every* Hot Stuff story ever published. This book gives us more than enough of Hot Stuff to get our fill of him. I think it's a great collection and I'm happy I purchased and read it. I went and purchased the Richie Rich Collection too as a result. I might get Casper in the future and I'm hoping for a Little Lotta collection at some point. This gets a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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