The Enigma of Al Capp

by Alexander Theroux

The creator of "Li'l Abner" goes under the microscope in this handsome monograph.
The National Book Award-nominated author of "Darconville's Cat" and "Three Wogs" delivers this slender-yet-rich monograph on the controversial life of cartoonist Al Capp, creator of Li'l Abner. "The left eventually broke his heart," wrote John Updike of Capp. A genuine American mythmaker and celebrated funnyman, Capp used his strip for years to expose greed, corruption and social injustice, while bringing belly laughs and dramatic suspense to the lives of millions of people every day.
Theroux, however, dives head-first into the often glossed-over side of Capp, delivering a keen (but not without compassion) analysis of Capp's degeneration into a bitter, disillusioned, conservative extremist, who began using his strip in later years to attack the very causes he once championed. This is a rich and compelling investigation into the psyche of a paradoxical American icon, who at the height of his fame was one of America's highest-paid and most well-known entertainers, gracing the cover of "Time" and other magazines, and franchising "Li'l Abner" into film, theater, radio, merchandising and more. Illustrated throughout with examples of Capp's cartoons.

Genres: Comics, Nonfiction, Biography, Comic Strips

64 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

About the author

Alexander Theroux is a novelist, poet, and essayist. The most apt description of the novels of Theroux was given by Anthony Burgess in praise of Theroux's Darconville's Cat: Theroux is 'word drunk', filling his novels with a torrent of words archaic and neologic, always striving for originality, while drawing from the traditions of Rolfe, Rabelais, Sterne, and Nabokov.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slim monograph on bigoted, sexist, and racist cartoonist Al Capp, whose unfunny ‘L’il Abner’ strip was for a cringing forty-year period the most popular newspaper comic in America, lampooning the Great & Stupid through use of an exaggerated southern dialect and an emphasis on elaborate grotesqueries. Capp was considered radical in his time and no doubt a large bulk of his work boasts strong (of the period) satirical merit when contrasted with the politics and censorship of the period (1940s-1950s being the heyday). However, Capp was a bilious capitalist underneath and undid his achievements by turning into a cancerous Republican embarrassment and turned his strip into a pulpit-pounding disaster that called into question the authority of his previous work. (Can a poisoned mind ever be on the “right” side?) Theroux adopts a neutral tone (although has clear affection for the man’s work) in this brief piece, limiting himself to speculation and biography in favour of his usual intellectual trek up the Andes. Engaging and a visual delight.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

HOUSEKEEPING 2025

I believe this is where I told Al (Theroux) to go fuck himself and threw his clothes in the street.

Problem: EVERY book, even non-fiction, is about THEROUX.

Fuck 'im.

(The second star goes to Mr. Capp.)

[Kalle Vilenius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Li’l Abner is not a comic strip I’m overly familiar with, though the characters and style are iconic enough to have been recognizable since childhood (I saw them within the pages of MAD, at a swinger’s party with Popeye and others) and their position in the history of American comics is undoubtedly an important one. As Theroux tells here, Al Capp began his strip about the hillbillies the same year Milton Caniff began Terry and the Pirates and Alex Raymond began Flash Gordon, so he was in illustrious company from the get-go.

While panels of Capp’s art are present on almost every page, giving an opportunity to appreciate both the craft of his figures (which is undeniably excellent) and the freely exaggerated caricatures of his faces (such variety!), there’s simply not enough of it. Theroux names a rather large number of principal characters who appear in the strip, but this naming is not accompanied by a series of handy mugshots the names could be attached to, and so a reader unfamiliar with the subject matter is left lost. I would’ve welcomed it, anyway.

But this is not just a book about the Li’l Abner strip, it’s a book about Al Capp. A quote from the man himself might shed light on his personality:

“No matter what else happens to me, I’m God himself when I sit down at this drawing board.”

Al Capp lost a leg in a traffic accident while still just a boy of nine. This manner of experience in one’s formative years is bound to leave a lasting impact on the psyche as well as the body. A cartoonist is indeed a god who commands the lives and destinies of the worlds he creates, and whatever control he may have lacked in life, he exercised in the strip. What did he use this power to do? Another quote, from Theroux:

“The satirist, by definition, ridicules in order to correct.”

Here then, is Capp’s motivation found: the world is a flawed place, and as the God of Dogspatch, he turns the sharp blade of satire toward the world in order to show his readers where things might be bettered. Why did he choose the comic strip? Because:

“No artist who can write should avoid words; no author who can draw should avoid drawing. That’s what a cartoonist can do and so we’ve always been looked down upon because we have one extra talent.”

And here’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Comics, be they comic books, comic strips or called by some other, more pretentious name (sequential art, graphic novels etc.) require combining the skills of two separate art forms yet receive none of the respect due to either. Theroux apparently falls into the Scott McCloud school as he’s willing to allow for the artform’s lifespan a whopping several millennia, taking ancient Egyptian cartoons as their beginning, and why shouldn’t he? Why is it, that an artform that requires such a variety of skills from its creator should be looked down upon in favour of works that don’t? This is not to say prose fiction, paintings and comics should be set against one another, but rather the opposite, that they should all be on equal footing.

Consider Al Capp in this light, a champion of, if not exactly a wholly unappreciated medium of artistic expression (newspaper strips were widely read and their creators were well paid, after all), then at least a master of an underappreciated one. He would not be placed on a pedestal similar to, say, novelist John Updike who is occasionally quoted by Theroux here, another prosaist who was clearly appreciative and sympathetic to the work of the cartoonist. Insecurities abounded. Another Theroux quote:

“It seems only sad in echo, for, if any one picture emerges from Al Capp’s memoirs, it’s the image of himself as a young and alienated teenager, a lost boy who craved normalcy, envied Yalies, never scored, but doublebouncing on a wooden peg, crow-hopped gimpily away from any girl he saw for feeling himself a freak.”

It wouldn’t be a Theroux book if he didn’t get those kinds of barbs in… well, a booklet anyway, at only 60 odd pages. Far from an in-depth look into the 40-year career Al Capp had, The Enigma of Al Capp is a highly abridged version of a man’s life and contributions to his chosen art, his rise to fame and the loss of it all as his politics shifted and he alienated his audience. As such it gets the job done and gives some food for thought.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short and concise biography of a the cartooning legend Al Capp who created the immortal Lil Abner comic strip. Several people seem to complain about this book. True, it is short. True, there might be one or two small factual errors. But as a broad look at the man's life, it captures all of the major beats. Al Capp once beloved man of of satire, became a public enemy after he took on Boomer liberals in the 1960s. in fact, you might say he was one of the first victims of cancel culture and the Me Too movement- long before that was even a thing. He was a bombastic loud man, who liked attention - even negative attention - who became angry in his old age and died shortly after the world had turned against him. Love him or hate him, he was an American success story.

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars is perhaps harsh, but there are several problems with this "book." For one thing, it's more like a long essay than a book: 64 pages, with numerous illustrations, makes for a pretty thin biographical/critical study. For another, it reads like it took maybe an afternoon to write. The first sentence (!) is grammatically incorrect (and other writing infelicities crop up relatively frequently), there is not much in the way of structure--as if Theroux just wrote stuff down as it occurred to him--there are errors either of fact (or of grammar leading to what appear to be errors of fact) such as the conflicting claims that Capp wrote Abbie 'n Slats for its entire run or for eight years or that Capp produced Lil' Abner by himself and that he had numerous assistants, sourcing is abysmal (sources are often not cited and there is no bibliography, images are never captioned), and ultimately the enigma of Al Capp remains an enigma. The "book" has little to offer other than speculation to explain Capp's political shift, or the differences between his public persona and private self. Of course, in 64 pages, how much enigma can be resolved?

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

What chased Capp (Lil Abner) from a serious lefty to a right winger?
i don't think the book gives a single defining incident or time in which Capp switches sides. It may be that old saying, "a man at twenty who is not a liberal has no heart, a man at forty who is not a conservative has no brain."
i also wonder a little bit about fact checking, the author says Pogo and Doonesbury were popular in the 60s (p42). Doonesbury started in the Yale college newspaper in 1968(?), but wasn't syndicated until 1970.
On page 36 Abbie an' Slats is said to be Capp's idea "and he wrote the entire story line of the strip (from 1936)until its demise in 1971." Page 39 says "for eight years he supplied the storyline for Abbie an' Slats." Spelling inconsistancies aside, there is the math question.
One last thing, captions are needed, lots of panels are reprinted, but nothing to identify the characters in them. The cover hasa photo of Capp, i assume, w/a blond woman. Is this a Daisy Mae from a play? Or one of the women he is accused of assaulting? There is no identification.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

For A. Theroux completists and fans of Al Capp only.

Capp turned from an incisive satirist into a reactionary asshole. Really.

This has none of the Therouvian charm of his Gorey book.

But it's short.