As a wee one, I was delighted by "Alley Oop," a comic strip about a hapless caveman and his varied exploits, though I had no idea how much it had changed since it first appeared.  In fact, seven years after debuting in 1932, the strip made a jaw-dropping, even radical, transformation when its cartoonist, V.T. Hamlin, zapped his caveman hero into the 20th century - and thereafter, into every conceivable time period - making him a humorous and perpetual fish-out-of-water, time-traveling character.  Before creating the strip, Hamlin served in WWI, where he survived a near-deadly poison gas attack and drafted cartoons during his long recovery. It was then when he realized that he might just have a future as a cartoonist. Luckily, he later ignored the rantings of a college art professor, who announced in class,"'Now here's a man with a wonderful talent and he wants to waste it on being a cartoonist!"  As the Roaring Twenties unfurled, Hamlin tried unsuccessfully ...