Li'l Abner
| Li'l Abner | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Al Capp |
| Current status/schedule | Defunct |
| Launch date | August 13, 1934 |
| End date | November 13, 1977 |
| Syndicate(s) | United Feature Syndicate |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Politics, Satire |
Template:Two other uses Li'l Abner was a comic strip in United States newspapers, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch. Written and drawn by Al Capp, the strip ran from 1934 through 1977.
Read daily by scores of millions of people, the strips characters and humor had a powerful cultural impact. A pseudo-holiday created in the strip, Sadie Hawkins Day is still observed in the form of dances at which women approach (or chase after) men.
Characters and Settings
The Yokums
The comic strip starred Li'l Abner Yokum, a dumb, obstinate, strong, and good-natured hillbilly. Abner lived at home with his parents, Pansy ("Mammy") and Lucifer ("Pappy") Yokum. Abner inherited his strength from the irascible Mammy, who dominated her family through the force of her personality, and dominated her foes with a knockout punch.
Abner's main goal in life was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, his beautiful and faithful girlfriend, and scion of the Yokums' feudal enemies, the Scraggs. For eighteen years, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's clutches time and again.
Capp finally gave in to reader pressure in 1952 and allowed the couple to marry. This was a major media event, and the happy couple even made the cover of Life on March 31, 1952, illustrating an article by Capp titled, "It's Hideously True!! The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) Wed".
Senator Phogbound
Senator Jack S. Phogbound was another memorable Dogpatch regular. A blustering Southern politician ("There's no Jack S like our Jack S!") who wore a coonskin cap and carried a rifle to impress his constituents, Phogbound is Capp's parody of the Southern Democrats who opposed the New Deal, of which Capp was a supporter. At one instance in the strip, Phogbound was unable to campaign in Dogpatch, so he sent his aides with a large balloon filled with hot air -- and nobody really noticed the difference.
Other regular characters
Abner's home town of Dogpatch was peopled with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin' Sam, Wolf Gal, Lena the Hyena, Indian Lonesome Polecat, [1] and a host of others, including the statuesque beauties Moonbeam McSwine, Stupefyin' Jones and Appassionata von Climax.
Another famous character was Joe Btfsplk, who only wanted to be a loving friend but was "the world's worst jinx", and always travelled with a small dark cloud over his head.
Perhaps Capp's most popular creation was the Shmoo, a species whose incredible usefulness and generous nature made it a threat to capitalism and perhaps to civilization.
Fearless Fosdick
Li'l Abner also featured a comic-strip within the comic-strip, titled Fearless Fosdick (a parody of Dick Tracy). The razor-jawed title character ("Li'l Abner's Ideel") might take a bullet in the chest and declare the gaping tunnel a mere "flesh wound". (Or, as the chief once said, "Fosdick! I thought you were dead!" Fosdick answered, "Yes, but it didn't prove fatal. Just a mild case [of death].")
Travel Settings
Situations often took the characters to other parts of the globe, including New York City, tropical islands, and a miserable frozen land of Capp's invention abounding in Yiddish humor, "Lower Slobbovia." Conceptually based on Siberia, or perhaps specifically on Birobidzhan, the worthless land was ruled by "King Stubbornovsky the Last". Their monetary unit was the "Razzbucknik", of which one was worth nothing, and a large quantity was worth a lot less, due to the trouble of carrying them around. The favorite food of the natives was raw polar bear and vice versa.
Topicality
Capp used Li'l Abner to satirize current events and fads, such as Zoot Suits in "Zoot Suit Yokum," in 1943.
In the 1960s and 70s, the strip became a forum for Capp's increasingly conservative political and cultural views.
Popularity and Production
At its peak, Li'l Abner was read daily by 70 million Americans (when the US population was only 180 million). Many communities staged "Sadie Hawkins Day" events, after an annual race in the strip in which the unmarried women were allowed to keep any man they could catch.
Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years but always drew the faces and hands himself. The most notable may have been Frank Frazetta, who drew the beautiful full-bodied women in the strip's later years before his own fame as a fantasy artist. The unseen Lena the Hyena, "the ugliest woman in the world," sparked a nationwide art contest; the winning design came from the then-unknown Basil Wolverton (later an artist for MAD).
Li'l Abner lasted until Capp's retirement on November 13, 1977, and Capp died two years later.
In 1988 and 1989 many newspapers ran reruns of Li'l Abner comic strip episodes, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. Following the 1989 revival of the Pogo comic strip, a revival of "L'il Abner" was also planned in 1990. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles, the new Abner was approved by Capp's widow and brother, Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn.
Apart from a few reprints in some books, no comprehensive reprint of the series had been attempted until Kitchen Sink Press started a series reprinting all the dailies in hardback and paperback, one year per volume. The demise of KSP stopped this reprint series with volume 27 (1961). More recently, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the Sundays done by Frank Frazetta in four volumes covering 1954-1961.
Beyond the comic strip
With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from November 20, 1939 to December 6, 1940.
The first Li'l Abner movie was made in 1940, starring Jeff York (credited as Granville Owen), Martha O'Driscoll, Mona Ray and Johnnie Morris. Although this movie lacked the political satire and Broadway polish of the 1959 version, it gave a fairly accurate portrayal of the various Dogpatch characters. Of particular note is the appearance of Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat. Naturally, the story is about Daisy Mae trying to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Since this movie predated their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape.
A musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway in 1956 and was made into a 1959 movie musical with Peter Palmer, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens, Donna Douglas, and a cameo by Jerry Lewis.
In 1968 a theme park named Dogpatch USA featuring Capp's characters opened in northwest Arkansas and remained a popular attraction until it closed in 1993. Several attempts have been made to reopen the park but at present it lies abandoned.
The original Dogpatch is a historical part of San Francisco dating back to the 1860s that escaped the earthquake and fire of 1906.
The Shmoo character was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series in the 1970s and 1980s. First in the 1979 The New Shmoo cartoon series (later incorporated into Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo) and then from 1980 to 1984 in the Flintstone Comedy Show in the Bedrock Cops segment.
In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps. The strip also won its creator, Al Capp, the Reuben Award in 1948.
In the last panel of a Little Annie Fanny story, a preview bill on a wall announcing an act appearing soon shows Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe, with the caption, "Coming--The @??!!!#$%??&*!!"
A Fred Lincoln-directed pornographic movie titled "Daisy May" was released in 1979 and was loosely based on Li'l Abner.
Mentioned numerous times in the M*A*S*H (TV series)
Notes
- ^ Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe (who was anything but hairless) were the brewers of "Kickapoo Joy Juice", presumably based on the real patent medicine "Kickapoo Indian Sagwa", a product of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company of Connecticut completely unrelated to the real Kickapoo Indian tribe(s) of Oklahoma, Kansas or Mexico/Texas
Contrary to popular opinion, Li'l Abner on the radio from Chicago from 1939-1940 was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. However, Gussman consulted closely with Capp on the story lines.
See also
- Salomey, the Yokums' pet pig.