Al Capp

More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain. Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.

Stories about the goings on in the family of "Li'l Abner" cartoonist Al Capp (1909-1949) by his brother Elliot Caplin. Includes bandw photos and cartoon illustrations. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

Cartoonist Al Capp presents 26 of his favorite sequences from his cartoon strip.

A complete collection of "Shmoo" comics penned by Al Capp from 1949 to 1950, and features essays by Denis Kitchen, and describes the history of the character, from its first appearance in a "Li'l Abner" comic strip in 1948.

The late, great cartoonist recalls his life and career, both as the creator of Li'l Abner and as a person who grew up with only one leg, in these hilarious essays written with gentle nostalgia and biting humor. 16-pages of cartoons.

More than fifty years ago, America was taken by storm when Al Capp introduced the Shmoo in his comic strip Li'l Abner. The adorable squash-shaped character was so popular it immediately spawned the largest merchandising craze in the nation's history. In the words of Lifemagazine, the nation was "Shmoo-struck." The Short Lifeand Happy Times of the Shmoocollects, for the first time in one volume, Capp's essential comic strips about the Shmoo. This is Al Capp and his incisive social criticism at its best.