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LI'L ABNER |
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Capp took Li'l Abner on an unusual year-long journey in 1950 to find "the perfect woman." Abner finds a piece of a torn photo showing a mystery woman's knee (and nothing more). He falls in love with that fetching joint and the hunt is on! Abner's quest takes him to outer space, to a tropical country full of beautiful women and sleepy men, to the corridors of political power, and to the wilds of Brooklyn. No other Abner adventure ever stretched out this long. Interestingly, the year starts out with a brief plot device involving an independent shadow following Pappy Yokum, but Capp's long preoccupation with the extended "knee" adventure left the shadow story completely abandoned, unusual for a professional as careful as Capp. Introduction by cartoonist and fine art professor Frank Stack. Another sidebar shows pictures of "cherubic faces" on womens' knees from 1930s Life magazines that inspired Capp eleven years later.
Cartoonist Al Capp made Li'l Abner and the rest of his Dogpatch characters jump through hoops this year. Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe (creators of the powerful and unpredictable Kickapoo Joy Juice and cast regulars over the strip's long history) are introduced in this volume. A King visits Dogpatch. Mammy meets Mother Ratfield. And Abner has a close call in the Sadie Hawkins Day race. There are an unusual three introductions in this volume. The first is by Julie Capp Cairol, Al Capp's daughter. Another introductory section focuses on Al Capp's other daily strip, "Abbie an' Slats" (1937-71) that he wrote for artist Raeburn Van Buren. Van Buren's nephew, Stephen Lamar Haris, tells the story of that strip's genesis and includes samples both "Abbie" and Van Buren's wonderful pre-Abbie artwork. The final introduction is by editor Dave Schreiner, with a focus on the "turning points" the strip took in 1939.
In 1946 Li'l Abner meets the beautiful but carnivorous Wolf Gal, who has her eyes (and stomach) on our hero. But even she is overshadowed this year by one of the strip's most memorable events ever. The most famous resident of hapless Lower Slobbovia is Lena the Hyena, the "ugliest woman in the world." She is so hideous that savvy cartoonist Al Capp cannot bear to draw her image himself. In an extraordinarily successful publicity stunt he enlisted readers to send in their drawings of Lena. And some 500,000 readers from 381 subscribing newspapers responded! To add to the public's attention, Capp persuaded actor Boris Karloff, surrealist Salvador Dali and crooner Frank Sinatra to join him in judging the finalists. The winner turned out to be Basil Wolverton, who became a famous cartoonist in his own right. The amazing background of this stunt is detailed in two fully illustrated introductions (which include pictures of the Lena runners-up). Other characters featured this year: Joe Btfsplk (the jinx with the cloud hanging over his head), Moonbeam McSwine, The Skraggs and Available Jones. |
