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Fearless Fosdick #1
Fearless Fosdick
Meet Fearless Fosdick - the ideel of Li'l Abner and every other red-blooded American boy. He's tough, he's violent, he's not too bright, and thanks to Al Capp, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. Inside you'll find five of Fosdick's greatest the Case of the Poisoned Beans, the Atom Bum, Anyface, Sidney the Crooked Parrot, and the Case of the Chippendale Chair. You'll also read Dick Tracy writer Max Allan Collins' tribute to the greatest detective of them all... Fearless Fosdick!
- GenresComics
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1991
9 people want to read
About the author
Al Capp
142 books7 followersAlfred Gerald Caplin (1909-1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist. He is best known as the creator, writer and artist of the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which run for 43 years from 1934 to 1977.
Capp was born in 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut, of a poor family of East European Jewish heritage. His childhood was scared by a serious accident: after being run over by a trolley car, nine years old Alfred had his left leg partially amputated. This early trauma possibly had an impact on Capp's cynical humour, as later represented in his strips. His father, Otto Philip Caplin, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, is credited for introducing Al and his two brothers to making comics.
After some training in art schools in New England, in 1932 Al Capp moved to New York with the intent of becoming a newspaper cartoonist. The same year he married Catherine Wingate Cameron. In the first couple of years of his career Capp worked as an assistant/ghost artist on Ham Fischer's strip 'Joe Palooka', while preparing to pitch his own comic strips to the newspaper syndicate.
His strip Li'l Abner was launched on Monday, August 13, 1934, in eight American newspapers to immediate success. The comic started as an hillibilly slapstick, then shifted over the year in the direction of satire, black humor and social commentary. The strip run until 1977, written and mostly drawn by Capp.
A lifelong chain smoker, All Capp died in 1979 from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
Capp was born in 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut, of a poor family of East European Jewish heritage. His childhood was scared by a serious accident: after being run over by a trolley car, nine years old Alfred had his left leg partially amputated. This early trauma possibly had an impact on Capp's cynical humour, as later represented in his strips. His father, Otto Philip Caplin, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, is credited for introducing Al and his two brothers to making comics.
After some training in art schools in New England, in 1932 Al Capp moved to New York with the intent of becoming a newspaper cartoonist. The same year he married Catherine Wingate Cameron. In the first couple of years of his career Capp worked as an assistant/ghost artist on Ham Fischer's strip 'Joe Palooka', while preparing to pitch his own comic strips to the newspaper syndicate.
His strip Li'l Abner was launched on Monday, August 13, 1934, in eight American newspapers to immediate success. The comic started as an hillibilly slapstick, then shifted over the year in the direction of satire, black humor and social commentary. The strip run until 1977, written and mostly drawn by Capp.
A lifelong chain smoker, All Capp died in 1979 from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 27, 2022
It's a bit TOO stupid but the social commentary within makes it entertaining enough in it's absurdity.
February 2, 2025
Capp was, from all accounts I've seen, an awful person - unpleasant to those around him and a reactionary toward the end, a serial sexual abuser who may also have helped drive Ham Fisher (of "Joe Palooka" fame) to suicide. On the other hand, Fosdick is a better critique of cops than anything all the 21st-century opinion mills put together have achieved. A lot funnier, too. The fact that Fosdick's adventures are a story within a story (the saga of mad cartoonist Lester Gooch) within a story (Li'l Abner's devotion to the funnies) elevates it past simple satire to something that would be cited reverently by modern critics if it didn't have Capp's name on it.
November 25, 2014
A mad satire, played deadpan and hilarious.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews