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Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

Exhibit: ReCAPP- A Bio Of The Creator Of Li’l Abner

Alfred Gerald Caplin (aka Al Capp) was born September 28, 1909 in New Haven, CT. He was best known as the creator of the classic comic strip Li’l Abner. At the age of 9, he jumped off the back of an ice wagon directly into the path of an oncoming streetcar. As a result of the accident, he had to have his leg amputated below the hip. This childhood tragedy likely helped shape Capp’s cynical worldview, which, funny as it was, was certainly darker and more sardonic than that of the average newspaper cartoonist. Capp wore a prosthetic leg. Rather than hide the fact, he openly joked about it all his life.

Capp began his career in comics as an assistant to Joe Palooka cartoonist Ham Fisher. The relationship soon soured, and Capp launched his own strip, Li’l Abner in August, 1934. What began as a simple hillbilly burlesque soon evolved into a masterpiece of satirical fiction, renowned for its vivid characters and top notch draftsmanship. The outlandish storylines and biting social commentary make Li’l Abner unique among newspaper comics of the day.

The strip featured the adventures of Abner Yokum, a loutish, stupid, but good-natured hayseed who lived in Dogpatch, KY with his scrawny but superhuman Mammy, and shiftless, childlike Pappy. Abner was always in the marital crosshairs of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed but virtuous (to a point) girlfriend. In 1952, Daisy Mae achieved her goal and the couple was married in the strip with great fanfare. This event was considered newsworthy enough to be featured on the cover of Life magazine.

Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of wonderful personalities, including Marryin’ Sam, Joe Btfsplk, Lena the Hyena, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, and a host of others. Most notably, certainly from a G.I. standpoint, were the beautiful, full-figured women like Wolf Gal, Stupefyin’ Jones and Moonbeam McSwine- all of whom found their way onto the painted noses of fighter planes during WWII. Perhaps Capp’s most popular creations were the Shmoos, gourd-shaped creatures whose incredible usefulness and generous nature made them a threat to civilization as we know it.

Throughout his life, Capp volunteered his time to hospitals, entertaining patients, especially to fellow amputees. He set an example for them, proving that the loss of a limb did not mean that one couldn’t live a full and rewarding life. He was also involved with the Sister Kenny Foundation, which did charity volunteer work for crippled children.

At its peak, Li’l Abner appeared in more than 900 newspapers, with an estimated daily readership of 80 million Americans. Around the country, colleges and communities staged "Sadie Hawkins Day" events. A Broadway play based on Li’l Abner opened in 1956, and was an instant success, and remains a favorite for local productions. It was made into a motion picture in 1959. In 1968 a theme-park called Dogpatch USA opened in Jasper, Arkansas based on Capp’s work and with his support.

Along with a team of assistants, Capp kept the adventures of the denizens of Dogpatch in the papers through the 1970s. The fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta penciled the Sunday page continuities from 1954 to 1962, when a salary dispute ended their professional relationship. Capp still wrote the stories, thumbnailed the layouts and inked the faces and hands himself.

Capp revelled in taking jabs at hypocrites of all persuasions. In the mid-1960s, he turned his attention to liberal counterculture figures. He toured college campuses as a speaker, taking confrontational stands on current events. After witnessing student riots in his own neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts (near Harvard) he took on anti-war protesters and demonstrators with a vengeance. In 1971, Capp was charged with "attempted adultery" by a female student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The fallout cost him circulation, with hundreds of papers dropping his strip. Capp removed himself from public speaking and continued to produce Li’l Abner until failing health forced him to retire in 1977. He died two years later of emphysema, on November 5th, 1979.

In 1946, Capp created an autobiographical comic book, Al Capp By Li’l Abner, which was distributed by the Red Cross to encourage thousands of amputee veterans returning from WWII…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Let me know what you think of this article in the comments.
-Mike Fontanelli, 2008

Many thanks to Mike for this wonderful series of articles.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit by Mike Fontanelli profiling the career of Al Capp.

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Newspaper Comics.

Posted in Al Capp, comic strips, lil abner, newspaper | Comments Off on Exhibit: ReCAPP- A Bio Of The Creator Of Li’l Abner

Wednesday, December 7th, 2022

Exhibit: CAPPtivating Heroes: Jack Jawbreaker and Fearless Fosdick Fight Crime!

Today, I’m proud to bring you another entry in Mike Fontanelli’s important series of articles on Al Capp’s life and career. It’s not good enough to bounce through a few pages of these stories and glance at the pictures. You have to sit down and READ them to get the full impact. If you don’t have time right now, bookmark this page and come back later. I’m sure you’ll find these stories as mind-blowing as I do! -Stephen Worth

Capp’s writing was first-rate, his characterizations were multitudinous and superb, his artwork was stunning, his compositions clever and arresting. For pure humor he was unequalled, and he blithely produced some of the most devastating satire and parody in our history. What elevates Capp even further… is his unfailingly prescient comments on human nature. –Richard Marschall, Nemo Magazine, April 1986

[Capp] was far more an intellectual than he allowed the public to see. ‘Li’l Abner’ was his joke on the dismal world around him. His humor welled- up from the melancholy pits of a strapping kid made an amputee at age nine- just when the other boys were learning to kick a football, and scruff along scattering leaves on autumn afternoons. –Milton Caniff, 1985

Li’l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. –John Updike, 1991

Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not their cartoonist creators. But in 1947 Al Capp brazenly defied his own syndicate, United Features. He sued them for $14 million, publicly embarrassed them in Li’l Abner, and successfully wrested back ownership and artistic control of his creation.

"Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!" (1947) may start out as an innocuous spoof of Superman, but don’t be fooled! It’s an angry and devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s notorious exploitation by DC Comics…

Capp’s classic Dick Tracy parody, Fearless Fosdick, was in some ways his most significant creation- at least in terms of lasting influence. It was almost certainly Harvey Kurtzman’s major inspiration for creating his innovative, irreverent Mad magazine, which began as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in 1952. That alone makes Fearless Fosdick, indirectly, one of the prime influences on postwar American popular culture.

Similarities between Li’l Abner and the early Mad are unmistakable: the incongruous use of Yiddish terms, the nose-thumbing disdain for pop cultural icons, the persistent "black" humor, and most unmistakably, the extremely broad visual styling. Even the trademark comic "signs" that clutter the backdrops of Will Elder’s panels would seem to have precedence in Li’l Abner- in the residence of Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted parodying either Li’l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence.

Sharp-eyed viewers of Warren Beatty’s big screen adaptation, Dick Tracy (1990) will have detected a direct, onscreen homage to Fearless Fosdick. The opera Tracy is attending when his 2-way wrist radio suddenly calls him to duty is titled "Die Schlmpf" on the concert program, after Elmer Schlmpf, the maniacal- albeit deceased- fiend from "The Poisoned Bean Case".

Like the Shmoo, Fosdick’s popularity would eventually rival that of the nominal star of the strip, Li’l Abner’s. So popular did Fosdick prove to be in his own right that he was licensed for use outside the strip, as a commercial pitchman for Wildroot Cream-Oil hair tonic. Fosdick’s image on tin signs and advertising displays became a prominent fixture in barbershops across America, as well as in animated TV commercials.

The Wildroot jingle- instantly familiar to radio listeners in the fifties- was performed by everyone from Bil Baird’s puppets to Nat King Cole, who once sang it on Woody Herman’s radio show. It went like this…

King Cole Trio: Wild Root Charlie
(AAC Audio File / 2 MB)

Get Wildroot Cream-Oil, Charlie!
It keeps your hair in trim
Y’see it’s non-alcoholic, Charlie,
It’s made with soothing lanolin!

You’d better get Wildroot Cream-Oil, Charlie!
Start using it today
You’ll find that you’ll have a tough time, Charlie
Keeping all those gals away!

A long-running series of comic strip-format ads appeared in newspapers, magazines and comic books, usually featuring Fosdick battling his arch-villain nemesis, "Anyface". Anyface was a murderous, shape-changing scoundrel whose plastic features could be molded into any identity. He was always given away by his telltale dandruff and messy hair, however. The Wildroot print ads joined Li’l Abner’s national ad campaigns for Cream of Wheat cereal and Procter & Gamble detergents- and later, Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat’s supermarket pitches for Kickapoo Joy Juice- when Capp’s volatile moonshine concoctio
n was licensed as a soft drink in 1965.

Here is an article from Pageant magazine from May of 1952 featuring a story on Fosdick’s father "Fearful Fosdick", and two of the more memorable run-ins with the mysterious Anyface…

In 1952, a puppet show based on Fearless Fosdick premiered on NBC on Sunday afternoons. Thirteen episodes were filmed featuring the Mary Chase marionettes. The TV show was presumed lost for decades, but vintage kinescopes have recently begun to resurface. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, there are currently efforts underway to release these exceedingly rare Fosdick episodes on a set of DVDs.

Our next story first appeared in 1948- before Monty Python, before Mad and Humbug, before Woody Allen’s classic stand-up routine about TV sets and elevators. Even years before Ernie Kovacs and "The Goon Show", Capp was already doing the kind of demented and surreal "sick" humor that would come into vogue just a few short years later.

The classic story "The Case Of The Chippendale Chair" was certainly ahead of its time. It shows Al Capp in peak form and at fever pitch, hitting on all cylinders…

To be continued…

-Mike Fontanelli 2008

Be sure to let Mike know in the comments what you think of these articles. -Steve

Cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald comments on this post at his blog, Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit by Mike Fontanelli profiling the career of Al Capp.

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Newspaper Comics.

Posted in Al Capp, comic strips, fearless fosdick, lil abner, Milton Caniff, newspaper | Comments Off on Exhibit: CAPPtivating Heroes: Jack Jawbreaker and Fearless Fosdick Fight Crime!

Monday, December 5th, 2022

Exhibit: CAPPital Ideas: The Modus Operandi of Li’l Abner

"I think [Al Capp] had a lot of talent, no question. He was a good artist. He could capture the peak expression- what made something ultra-funny or ultra-nasty or ultra-cute. He was a very brilliant guy, although a little screwed up. But he was talented, no question. I think he was quite the artist." –Frank Frazetta, Comics Journal Feb. 1995

Al Capp had been the uncredited and underpaid ghost for Ham Fisher on Joe Palooka, an experience so unpleasant that he made it a point to value his own assistants. Some of them, like Andy Amato and Harvey Curtis, made whole careers with him. Capp’s key assistant staff received a generous incentive- ten percent of the profits the strip generated, on top of their regular salaries.

Beginning in 1954, a young Frank Frazetta was paid the then princely salary of $500 a week- primarily to pencil the Sunday sequences from Capp’s roughs. By his own account, Frazetta enjoyed a one-day work week for years, allowing him to play baseball the other four days! Capp eventually put a stop to Frazetta’s 8-hour work week by halving his salary. But Frazetta quit instead, in January of 1962.

Other artists, like Moe Leff and Bob Lubbers, who drew Long Sam, Capp’s alternate hillbilly comic strip (see above) were tapped to assist as well, especially on the extensive specialty, promotional and licensed commercial work. The Cream Of Wheat and Wildroot Cream Oil magazine ads alone numbered in the hundreds.

Frazetta expert David Winiewicz has described the everyday working mode of operation of Li’l Abner from its golden period:

"By the time Frazetta began working on the strip, the work of producing Li’l Abner was too much for one person. Capp had a group of assistants who he taught to reproduce his distinctive individual style, working under his direct supervision. Actual production of the strip began with a rough layout in pencil done by Al Capp, from Capp’s script or a co-authored script, and the page would pass to Andy Amato and Walter Johnson. Amato would ink the figures, then Johnson added backgrounds and any mechanical objects. Harvey Curtis was responsible for the lettering and also shared inking duties with Amato… In order to make sure that the work stayed true to his style, the final touches would be added by Capp himself. He enjoyed adding a distinctive glint to an eye or an idiosyncratic contortion to a character’s face. The finished strip was truly an ensemble effort, a skillful blending of talents."

Capp’s latter-day reputation for using assistants is ironic. Nearly every great comic strip artist (with the exception of Charles Schulz) utilized anonymous, behind-the-scenes assistants. But no other cartoonist engineered media coverage of them, complete with photographs, in a major national magazine piece. Capp did, in a November 1950 issue of Time magazine, when he insisted that the article also feature his colleagues Andy Amato and Walter Johnson. Publicizing one’s assistants was unheard of at the time, and is still considered highly irregular. As a direct result, Capp is often remembered today for not having worked on his own strip, a persistent myth that the assistant artists themselves refuted.

The evidence indicates that Capp had the leading hand in the creation of Li’l Abner. Original strips I’ve seen have often included Capp’s pencil doodles on the back. They show his thought process clearly, and are the origin of the material on the other side. Many of Capp’s exploratory sketches survive in just this way, to show that Capp designed the characters carefully and thoughtfully himself.

The only time Capp really gave an assistant a free hand visually was in an early (1954) Frazetta-penciled story. Capp was curious to see him bring a fresh look to the daily strip, especially in terms of more lavish and realistic Johnny Comet style inking. Frazetta was also allowed to design a lead villain- a self-caricature, even named "Frankie". (see below) When editors complained about the experimental stylistic departure, the Capp look was reinstated.

Capp orchestrated his assistant staff much like an animation director, according to their individual strengths. At the same time, he maintained creative control over every stage of production. Capp himself originated the stories, finalized the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and inked the faces and hands of the characters- for 43 years. Yet to this day, Capp’s detractors still falsely claim that Capp "never touched the strip" in an inexplicable ongoing effort to discredit him.

Although a team effort production-wise, few comic strips were as uniquely personal a creation as Li’l Abner. The finished product reflected the singular personality of its creator- Al Capp. As any fool kin plainly see…

In these two sequences, Capp kids his fellow cartoonists- Mary Worth writer, Allen Saunders and longtime pal Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon) The pitch-perfect parody, Steve Cantor was scripted and laid out by Capp, penciled by Frazetta, probably inked by Amato and Johnson, and lettered by an actual assistant at the Caniff studio- probably Frank Engli– it all blends seamlessly to create a truly classic Sunday sequence from 1957…

Even in the later years, Capp would occasionally knock one out of the park. The following hilarious continuity appeared in 1967, long after the strip’s nominal heyday. The jaw-dropping Lips Of Marcia Perkins is no less than Capp’s covert, satirical commentary on venereal disease! It could only have gotten past the censors because they didn’t understand it…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Special thanks to my pal, Atlanta-based animator Joe Suggs, for some 9th inning pinch-hit assistance on this article. -Mike Fontanelli, 2008

Many thanks to Mike for this wonderful series of articles.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit by Mike Fontanelli profiling the career of Al Capp.

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Newspaper Comics.

Posted in Al Capp, comic strips, lil abner, Milton Caniff, newspaper, steve canyon | Comments Off on Exhibit: CAPPital Ideas: The Modus Operandi of Li’l Abner