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Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays #1
Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays, Vol. 1: 1934-1936
-The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints...The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time.” - Scoop
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 20, 2010
2 people are currently reading
66 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 3, 2020
It is very rare that things are considered "classic" when they come to the notice of the general public. This is especially true in the world of the daily newspaper comics page, where varied strips like
Pogo
,
Dick Tracy
and even
Peanuts
were not recognized as the funny pages stalwarts they would be viewed as in retrospect after the creators ended their time on them. L'il Abner falls into this category, as it was a cultural phenomenon, going from the comics page to both a Broadway musical and film, over a decade before Schulz's masterpiece would do the same. But the elements of the comic that made it a phenomenon (the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance, the Shmoo, and Fearless Fosdick among others) are rarely present at the beginning and that is the case with L'il Abner Volume 1.
Often, as is the case with the early days of these strips, they are more interesting for their historical significance for their actual content. L'il Abner is a story about a family of hillbillies from Dogpatch (wherever in the uncivilized rural United States that may be) written by a guy who was from Connecticut. That the first major story arc in the comic is essentially a "fish out of water" story where the naive L'il Abner comes to the "big city" to stay with his aunt (who has successfully managed to cast off her past and become an urban socialite) is not surprising, nor is the fact that L'il Abner creator Al Capp kept going back to this well over and over again (this is how Volume 2 starts as well. The fact is that Capp knew more about Abner's unfamiliar surroundings than about Abner's people himself. Of course, the readers, likely absorbing L'il Abner as part of their local urban newspapers likely didn't have a problem with the yokel stereotype that Capp based his strip on, because they weren't like that. Of course, it is possible to create fluid, living breathing characters based off of those initial stereotypes, but that doesn't happen here and the result is somewhat predictable.
The real meat in this volume is the background introductions which introduce readers to Al Capp, a creator of a classic comic strip with a complicated life. Capp comes off as kind of an asshole--there are allegations that he stole the L'il Abner character from his boss, Ham Fisher, when he was an assistant on the comic Joe Palooka (the Joe Palooka strips are helpfully included in this volume.) This created a long running feud that only ended with Fisher's suicide twenty years later. In addition, Capp was the original Louis C.K., apparently exposing himself to young women time and again in his later years. Of course, this makes reading L'il Abner difficult, since it is sometimes hard to separate the art from the artist.
The fact of the matter remains, however that regardless of how terrible a person Capp was (and I'm going to say that if you keep pulling your dick out when no one wants to see, you're terrible), L'il Abner transcended Al Capp at some point, just like Peanuts did to Charles Schulz. But the strips in this volume are not indicative of what would make L'il Abner a phenomenon later on.
Often, as is the case with the early days of these strips, they are more interesting for their historical significance for their actual content. L'il Abner is a story about a family of hillbillies from Dogpatch (wherever in the uncivilized rural United States that may be) written by a guy who was from Connecticut. That the first major story arc in the comic is essentially a "fish out of water" story where the naive L'il Abner comes to the "big city" to stay with his aunt (who has successfully managed to cast off her past and become an urban socialite) is not surprising, nor is the fact that L'il Abner creator Al Capp kept going back to this well over and over again (this is how Volume 2 starts as well. The fact is that Capp knew more about Abner's unfamiliar surroundings than about Abner's people himself. Of course, the readers, likely absorbing L'il Abner as part of their local urban newspapers likely didn't have a problem with the yokel stereotype that Capp based his strip on, because they weren't like that. Of course, it is possible to create fluid, living breathing characters based off of those initial stereotypes, but that doesn't happen here and the result is somewhat predictable.
The real meat in this volume is the background introductions which introduce readers to Al Capp, a creator of a classic comic strip with a complicated life. Capp comes off as kind of an asshole--there are allegations that he stole the L'il Abner character from his boss, Ham Fisher, when he was an assistant on the comic Joe Palooka (the Joe Palooka strips are helpfully included in this volume.) This created a long running feud that only ended with Fisher's suicide twenty years later. In addition, Capp was the original Louis C.K., apparently exposing himself to young women time and again in his later years. Of course, this makes reading L'il Abner difficult, since it is sometimes hard to separate the art from the artist.
The fact of the matter remains, however that regardless of how terrible a person Capp was (and I'm going to say that if you keep pulling your dick out when no one wants to see, you're terrible), L'il Abner transcended Al Capp at some point, just like Peanuts did to Charles Schulz. But the strips in this volume are not indicative of what would make L'il Abner a phenomenon later on.
August 3, 2018
I won't be too critical of a piece that was never aiming for a Pulitzer. It was entertaining for a certain English-language newspaper-buying population, and it says as much about them (or more) that it does about the hillbillies that it lampoons. I read this with my anthropologist's hat on, and it works that way.
October 21, 2025
Li'l Abner is quite like Popeye in a few ways. Both have great strength, speak funny and get into unfortnuate predicaments. This is definitely an interesting comic that Al Capp made, and I'm hanging around for volume 2.
September 22, 2014
Review, whar is yo?
So, really, is this dialect reasonable? I think not. I think it's an exercise in perversity. Once in a while this strip hits comic high notes. Maybe Capp got better. It's not bad. But it's not especially captivating most of the time.
I would be interested in some scholarship comparing this grandmother to the grandmother in the Beverly Hillbilles (spiritual successor) and Popeye (competitor.)
And also, isn't Abner a lout for not marrying Daisy Mae already?
So, really, is this dialect reasonable? I think not. I think it's an exercise in perversity. Once in a while this strip hits comic high notes. Maybe Capp got better. It's not bad. But it's not especially captivating most of the time.
I would be interested in some scholarship comparing this grandmother to the grandmother in the Beverly Hillbilles (spiritual successor) and Popeye (competitor.)
And also, isn't Abner a lout for not marrying Daisy Mae already?
January 11, 2013
The first couple of years of this classic strip are pretty solid, generally; Capp's art, certainly, is sharp from the beginning, and the stories, though they tend to be rather shapeless, are amusing. Capp's dependence on a sort of winking implausibility works bet-ter than it really ought to. Fun stuff.
May 8, 2015
Art is fun. Story is sometimes engaging but usually not funny. Fans of the Beverly Hillbillies would probably enjoy it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews