COSTUME DRAMA : HOT STUFF THE LITTLE DEVIL'S DEMON DIAPERS

Yeah, I'm a little turned on too.

Hot Stuff the Little Devil was more or less my jam when I was a wee'yin back in the old days, when comics were whittled from whole pieces of cherrywood trees and posted like flags above the trading post. We'd ride in from the territories to hear them read to us by the man from the Western Union office, since he was the only living soul for a radius of fifty miles who owned a spyglass. The whole trip would take four days and sometimes we'd lose four, maybe five men on the trip. Hard times.

That being said, though, I can't really recall all that much about him. I'm sure I remember as many of the basics as anyone with a passing interest in the character or in old Harvey Comics may recall - he was a short-tempered little devil, armed with a fire-shooting pitchfork. His uncles and some of his aunts were devils, some of his other aunts were witches, which is either how devil biology works or he was the union of a witch and a devil, which means he has the same origin as Hellboy pretty much.

Oh, and he wears a diaper.

Kink-Y! Oh, wait, you mean on his shirt.

Even as a child, the diaper was really alarming to me, because Hot Stuff appeared to be roughly equivalent to a child of seven or eight, assuming you accepted that he was a kid in the sense we understand it. And then again, sometimes he appeared to be an adult. He lived on his own, he provided for himself, he had a girlfriend, the hallmarks of adulthood in what appeared physically to be a kindergartner with a terrible case of roseacea and who also walked around pissing and shitting himself relentlessly, one supposes.

I could recall that all of the little kid devils wore diapers, and that the aunts all wore the same formless cloaks you'd see on witches over in Wendy and Casper (if you're really into the "shared universe" dealieo, feel free to consider those to be "Easter Eggs"), and that probably the off-panel portionss of Hot Stuff's home were simply caked and reeking with expunged befoulment.

Recently, I had the opportunity to check out some old Hot Stuff comics again, and this is where I learned to my cost: ALL THE DEVILS WEAR DIAPERS.

YOUNG

OLD

FAT

DIAPERS, EVERY ONE OF THEM.

This doesn't seem super-professional.

No wonder that forest's so lush and green. This is a more startling depiction of devilkind than ever found in any Hieronymous Bosch painting. I'd take being consumed by a fish-faced pope and pooped out into a translucent bubble any day over thousands of free-shitting, wildly-pissing devils tromping around.

In one adventure, (Devil Kids vol.1 No.27, 196, "Devil Boy") Hot Stuff doffs his doodie-pants and tries on an ersatz superhero costume, after having been inspired by a drive-in movie presentation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase 8 films. Although the experiment ends up in mild disaster - he gets burrs on his costume, gets overstarched, is attacked by moths and generally has to keep his flame powers on the downlow so as to not destroy his neat new playsuit - it yields knowledge. Terrible, unfortunate knowledge.

Switching back into his regular togs, he flies off into the distance, leaving a nearby pair of frightened fauna to give voice to their terror and give a name to Hot Stuff's butt-hugging glad rags:

DEMON. DIAPER. Have there ever been two worse words in the English language? I genuinely hate that they have a name, it somehow makes it much worse.