Hip Flask (comics)
Encyclopedia
Hieronymous "Hip" Flask is a fictional anthropomorphic hippopotamus
who appears in comic book
s published by Active Images
and Image Comics
. He was created by Richard Starkings
.
comic book font
s in the late 1990s in which he was originally depicted as a private detective (this has since changed in the pages of his own comics). The character was created by Starkings when he failed to receive authorization from Marvel
or DC Comics
to use their characters in his Comicraft ads. He later graduated to his own series of one-shots by writers Richard Starkings, Joe Casey
and artist Ladrönn.
His strip adventures have placed him firmly in the science fiction
genre
, in a dystopian future (2262). Much of the imagery of Hip Flask's world is reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner
, especially as both are set in Los Angeles
. The comics have been published once every one or two years, with three issues available as of July 2006.
A monthly series called Elephantmen
was first available for sale in stores in July 2006, published by Image Comics
. Set in the same universe
, focuses mainly on other human/animal hybrids, fleshing out the continuity of the main series, though Hip will feature as well.
In 2001, the character's similarities with an Australian comic book character called Hairbutt (a bumbling anthropomorphic hippopotamus private detective) led Hairbutt co-creator Bodine Amerikah and Darren Close of OzComics to accuse Hip Flask creator Richard Starkings
of plagiarism
. Starkings replied that he created Hip Flash without any knowledge of Hairbutt, and that their similarities were a bizarre coincidence.
Japan
ese scientist
, Dr Kazushi Nikken, breeds human/animal hybrids in a secure, top secret facility somewhere in North Africa
. The Hybrids are composed of numerous African animal species
including Warthog
s, Elephant
s, Camel
s, Zebra
s, Rhinos
, Hippo
s, Giraffe
s and Crocodile
s. The process involves implanting embryo
s into the wombs of kidnapped local women who are disposed of after giving birth. Each child is branded
after birth marking them as the property of MAPPO. Hip Flask's scar
is distorted so that "Hippopotomas Hybrid Flask #7A" instead reads just "Hip Flask #7A", hence his name.
These Elephantmen are trained from birth to be soldier
s and killers, they are indoctrinated in an Orwellian
mindset to think of themselves as property
of the MAPPO Corporation and to deny any concept of freethought
. Hip Flask was possibly the only Elephantman who dared to ask questions during his childhood education, an act for which he was placed in solitary confinement
.
The U.N
upon discovering these experiments sends in an army
to storm MAPPO's Secret base. While their mission has not been elaborated at this stage it seems to be a combination of liberating the Elephantmen, investigating the attacks on the local populace and ending the development of MAPPO's illegal army
.
MAPPO turns the Elephantmen on the U.N troops, and horrendous casualties are inflicted on both sides. Ultimately the U.N. succeed in subduing the Elephantmen and the MAPPO Personnel are arrested. The Elephantmen are rehabilitated and released to establish their own lives in the outside world where they are generally welcomed with distrust and horror from humans. Many of the Elephantmen were assigned jobs by the government.
The intervening years of Hip Flask's life have not yet been revealed but many years later he appears as an advisor for the Information Agency, a government body tasked with monitoring data and information as an aid to law enforcement
. He is partnered by a beautiful young woman named Vanity Case who seems to have romantic feelings towards him (much to Hip's embarrassment). Despite his traumatic childhood Hip Flask is shown to be a calm, kind and friendly individual, unlike many of the other Elephantmen who display a great deal of bitterness.
) who runs a floating restaurant/night club called the Eye of the Needle, Jeremiah Granger, a Giraffe hybrid and proprietor of the tailor
's All Creatures Great and Tall and Ebony, a true Elephant/Man and a colleague of Hip's.
The most famous Elephantman in this world is Obadiah Horn (a rhino hybrid) who has risen in prominence as a businessman though this may hide more underhanded dealings. He is married to a human named Sahara, daughter of a prominent business rival of Horn's named Serengheti. She is a former member of the U.N team that rescued the Elephantmen from MAPPO.
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
who appears in comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s published by Active Images
Active Images
Active Images is a publisher of fonts and comic books based in the United States.Founded by Richard Starkings the company publishes fonts which are used by their commercial comic book lettering division Comicraft and comic books featuring the character Hip Flask....
and Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...
. He was created by Richard Starkings
Richard Starkings
Richard Starkings is a British font designer and comic book letterer, editor and writer. He was one of the early pioneers of computer based comic book lettering and as a result is one of the most prolific creators in that industry.-Career:...
.
Overview
The character of Hip Flask first appeared in a number of advertisements for ComicraftComicraft
Comicraft is a company which provides graphic design and lettering services to various companies.-History:The company was founded by Richard Starkings in 1992. Starkings had been working for Marvel UK for five years, but left London for New York, circa 1990...
comic book font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
s in the late 1990s in which he was originally depicted as a private detective (this has since changed in the pages of his own comics). The character was created by Starkings when he failed to receive authorization from Marvel
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
or DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
to use their characters in his Comicraft ads. He later graduated to his own series of one-shots by writers Richard Starkings, Joe Casey
Joe Casey
Joe Casey is an American comic book writer. He has worked on titles such as Wildcats 3.0, Uncanny X-Men, The Intimates, Adventures of Superman, and G.I. Joe: America's Elite, among others.-Biography:...
and artist Ladrönn.
His strip adventures have placed him firmly in the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
, in a dystopian future (2262). Much of the imagery of Hip Flask's world is reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
, especially as both are set in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The comics have been published once every one or two years, with three issues available as of July 2006.
A monthly series called Elephantmen
Elephantmen
Elephantmen is an American ongoing monthly comic book published by Image Comics and written by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat and a number of other artists...
was first available for sale in stores in July 2006, published by Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...
. Set in the same universe
Fictional universe
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
, focuses mainly on other human/animal hybrids, fleshing out the continuity of the main series, though Hip will feature as well.
In 2001, the character's similarities with an Australian comic book character called Hairbutt (a bumbling anthropomorphic hippopotamus private detective) led Hairbutt co-creator Bodine Amerikah and Darren Close of OzComics to accuse Hip Flask creator Richard Starkings
Richard Starkings
Richard Starkings is a British font designer and comic book letterer, editor and writer. He was one of the early pioneers of computer based comic book lettering and as a result is one of the most prolific creators in that industry.-Career:...
of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
. Starkings replied that he created Hip Flash without any knowledge of Hairbutt, and that their similarities were a bizarre coincidence.
Fictional character biography
Some two hundred years from now, the MAPPO Corporation, headed by the misanthropic and megalomaniacalNarcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...
, Dr Kazushi Nikken, breeds human/animal hybrids in a secure, top secret facility somewhere in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
. The Hybrids are composed of numerous African animal species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
including Warthog
Warthog
The Warthog or Common Warthog is a wild member of the pig family that lives in grassland, savanna, and woodland in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the past it was commonly treated as a subspecies of P...
s, Elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
s, Camel
Camel
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...
s, Zebra
Zebra
Zebras are several species of African equids united by their distinctive black and white stripes. Their stripes come in different patterns unique to each individual. They are generally social animals that live in small harems to large herds...
s, Rhinos
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
, Hippo
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
s, Giraffe
Giraffe
The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...
s and Crocodile
Crocodile
A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...
s. The process involves implanting embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
s into the wombs of kidnapped local women who are disposed of after giving birth. Each child is branded
Human branding
Human branding or stigmatizing is the process in which a mark, usually a symbol or ornamental pattern, is burned into the skin of a living person, with the intention that the resulting scar makes it permanent. This is performed using a hot or very cold branding iron...
after birth marking them as the property of MAPPO. Hip Flask's scar
Scar
Scars are areas of fibrous tissue that replace normal skin after injury. A scar results from the biological process of wound repair in the skin and other tissues of the body. Thus, scarring is a natural part of the healing process. With the exception of very minor lesions, every wound results in...
is distorted so that "Hippopotomas Hybrid Flask #7A" instead reads just "Hip Flask #7A", hence his name.
These Elephantmen are trained from birth to be soldier
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...
s and killers, they are indoctrinated in an Orwellian
Orwellian
"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society...
mindset to think of themselves as property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
of the MAPPO Corporation and to deny any concept of freethought
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
. Hip Flask was possibly the only Elephantman who dared to ask questions during his childhood education, an act for which he was placed in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
.
The U.N
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
upon discovering these experiments sends in an army
Army
An army An army An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
to storm MAPPO's Secret base. While their mission has not been elaborated at this stage it seems to be a combination of liberating the Elephantmen, investigating the attacks on the local populace and ending the development of MAPPO's illegal army
Crime against peace
A crime against peace, in international law, refers to "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing"...
.
MAPPO turns the Elephantmen on the U.N troops, and horrendous casualties are inflicted on both sides. Ultimately the U.N. succeed in subduing the Elephantmen and the MAPPO Personnel are arrested. The Elephantmen are rehabilitated and released to establish their own lives in the outside world where they are generally welcomed with distrust and horror from humans. Many of the Elephantmen were assigned jobs by the government.
The intervening years of Hip Flask's life have not yet been revealed but many years later he appears as an advisor for the Information Agency, a government body tasked with monitoring data and information as an aid to law enforcement
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
. He is partnered by a beautiful young woman named Vanity Case who seems to have romantic feelings towards him (much to Hip's embarrassment). Despite his traumatic childhood Hip Flask is shown to be a calm, kind and friendly individual, unlike many of the other Elephantmen who display a great deal of bitterness.
Other Elephantmen
So far the series has also introduced a number of other Elephantmen including Casbah Joe, a Camel hybrid (resembling Joe CamelJoe Camel
Joe Camel was the advertising mascot for Camel cigarettes from late 1987 to July 12, 1997, appearing in magazine advertisements, billboards, and other print media.-History:The U.S. marketing team of R. J...
) who runs a floating restaurant/night club called the Eye of the Needle, Jeremiah Granger, a Giraffe hybrid and proprietor of the tailor
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
's All Creatures Great and Tall and Ebony, a true Elephant/Man and a colleague of Hip's.
The most famous Elephantman in this world is Obadiah Horn (a rhino hybrid) who has risen in prominence as a businessman though this may hide more underhanded dealings. He is married to a human named Sahara, daughter of a prominent business rival of Horn's named Serengheti. She is a former member of the U.N team that rescued the Elephantmen from MAPPO.