Word: abner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though gone from the papers, many of Capp's creations will live on. Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae long ago slipped into American language and folklore, together with the other denizens of Capp's hillbilly heaven, where Mammy Yokum defended her ragtag family and shaky log cabin against the likes of zoot-suited Evil-Eye Fleegle and his triple whammy. Joe Btfsplk and his perpetual cloud rained down bad luck on almost everyone, and the unluckiest ended up in the hands of Freddie the undertaker. The shmoos rolled over dead and oven ready for hungry hoomins...
...will obligingly hitch a fleet-hoofed gal to any hapless bachelor she can catch. Finally, at Daisy Mae's insistence, Cartoonist Al Capp hisself makes a rare appearance in the strip to schedule the prenuptial foot race for Nov. 26. Snorts a disgusted Li'l Abner: "Ha!-Any day is okay when an-ugh! -Dogpatch maiden kin ketch-sob!-a Dogpatch bachelor...
Capp, who grew up Dogpatch poor in New Haven and Bridgeport, Conn., originated Li'I Abner in 1934. It was the first humorous strip to attempt serious political satire and was an almost instant success, appearing in roughly 900 newspapers by the late 1960s. At his peak, Capp earned more than $500,000 a year from the strip and its numerous spinoffs, including a Broadway musical and two movies...
...singer Joanie Phoanie and hairy thugs from S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything). Capp gradually alienated his college-age audience, which switched to more congenial strips like Walt Kelly's Pogo and Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. Today fewer than 400 papers still carry Li'l Abner. For a while, Capp remained a perverse favorite on the campus lecture circuit. But he became something of a recluse after 1972, when a judge in Eau Claire, Wis., fined him $500 for attempted adultery-a crime in Wisconsin-with a state university coed...
...great shortness of breath for the past five or six years. I really couldn't go on with it. I just can't breathe." He admits parting with his characters is a wrench: "I keep thinking of all kinds of things to do with Li'l Abner even now. But he's had the most fantastic run for 43 years, and I think this is a decent...