Smokey Stover is an American comic strip written and drawn by cartoonist Bill Holman from March 10, 1935, until he retired in 1972[1] and distributed through the Chicago Tribune.

The madcap situations in Holman's comic strip usually feature Smokey (short for "Smokestack") Stover, the "foolish foo (fire)fighter", often riding in his self-balancing, two-wheeled "Foomobile" (a single-axle fire engine which resembles a modern Segway with seats, or an independent sidecar), his wife Cookie, his son Earl, his boss Chief Cash U. Nutt, the Chief's wife Hazel Nutt and the firehouse Dalmatian mascot, Sparks.

Smokey wears bright red (or yellow) rubber boots and a firefighter's helmet (always worn back-to-front), which he sometimes ties to his nose with string, in lieu of a chinstrap.

Although most of the sequences in the strip (and the occasional comic book) center on Smokey's escapades with the Chief, the loose "plots" and situations are mainly a framework to display an endless parade of off-the-wall verbal and visual humor.

[citation needed] During World War II, images of Smokey Stover and Spooky were painted as nose art on several American bomber aircraft.

[14] The term was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various unidentified flying objects or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theaters of Operations.

Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl hoped to keep his anonymity and release recordings under the title "Foo Fighters", taken from the World War II term for UFOs and indirectly from Holman's strip.

[citation needed] Holman launched an accompanying topper strip called Spooky one month later (April 7, 1935), to run with Smokey Stover on Sundays.

With a perpetually bandaged tail, the peculiar black cat Spooky lives with his owner Fenwick Flooky, who does embroidery while characteristically wearing a fez and sitting barefoot in a rocking chair.

[15] Spooky, who makes frequent cameo appearances in Smokey Stover, also regularly turns up in the background of Holman's daily gag panel feature, Nuts and Jolts.