Li'l Abner: Dailies, Vol. 3: 1937

Li'l Abner Dailies #3

by Al Capp, David Schreiner

The introduction and origin of Sadie Hawkins Day, the tradition of an annual day in which women pursued men became a nationwide phenomenon. This third volume reprints the 1937 daily strips and includes an introduction by comic historian Bill Blackbeard. Also included is an article that puts the strip into the historical context of 1937.

168 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Alfred 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.

Reviews

[Michael Beyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Al Capp is a master cartoonist. He could draw with beautifully realized precision and warp the human form in ways that made the absurd real. He could tell a gag that was funny in itself, and yet, advance the overall story as well. And he did it every day.
1937 was a year of great things for Li'l Abner. He would lose his memory and become an undefeatable wrestling star in London. He would get a full scholarship to a seminary, but it was an all-girl school which meant he had to wear a dress. And on Sadie Hawkins Day, Daisy Mae would catch him by the neck. It was brilliant. And it wasn't even Capp's finest year.
If you've every loved a comics page daily strip in your reading lifetime,you need to read this one. I guarantee you will love it too.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think there is something fundamentally flawed with your character if you laugh at people unfortunate enough to be stupid and/or uneducated, and that is the basis for the so-called humor in this comic strip. One star, with an extra star because this book has the origin of Sadie Hawkins Day.

[Bernard Convert · Rating 4 out of 5]

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