What began as a hillbilly burlesque soon evolved into one of the most imaginative, popular and well-drawn strips of the 20th century. Featuring vividly outlandish characters, bizarre situations, and equal parts suspense, slapstick, irony, satire, black humor and biting social commentary, Li'l Abner is considered a classic of the genre. The comic strip stars Li'l Abner Yokum—the simple-minded, loutish but good-natured and eternally innocent hayseed who lives with his parents—scrawny but superhuman Mammy Yokum, and shiftless, childlike Pappy Yokum.
"Yokum" was a combination of yokel and hokum, although Capp established a deeper meaning for the name during a series of visits around 1965–1970 with comics historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price. “It’s phonetic Hebrew—that’s what it is, all right—and that’s what I was getting at with the name Yokum, more so than any attempt to sound hickish," said Capp. "That was a fortunate coincidence, of course, that the name should pack a backwoods connotation. But it’s a godly conceit, really, playing off a godly name—Joachim means 'God’s determination', something like that—that also happens to have a rustic ring to it."
The Yokums live in the backwater hamlet of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Described by its creator as "an average stone-age community," Dogpatch mostly consists of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, pine trees, "tarnip" fields and "hawg" wallows. Whatever energy Abner had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed (but virtuous) girlfriend—until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry. This newsworthy event made the cover of Life on March 31, 1952.
Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin' Sam, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, Lena the Hyena, Senator Jack S. Phogbound (Capp's caricature of the anti-New Deal Dixiecrats), the (shudder!) Scraggs, Washable Jones, Nightmare Alice, Earthquake McGoon, and a host of others. Most notably, certainly from a G.I. point of view, are the beautiful, full-figured women like Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Stupefyin' Jones and Moonbeam McSwine (a caricature of his wife Catherine, aside from the dirt)—all of whom found their way onto the painted noses of bomber planes during World War II and the Korean War. Perhaps Capp's most popular creations were the Shmoos, creatures whose incredible usefulness and generous nature made them a threat to civilization as we know it. Another famous character was Joe Btfsplk, who wants to be a loving friend but is "the world's worst jinx," bringing bad luck to all those nearby. Btfsplk (his name is "pronounced" by simply blowing a "raspberry" or Bronx cheer) always has an iconic dark cloud over his head.
Dogpatch residents regularly combat the likes of city slickers, business tycoons, government officials and intellectuals with their homespun simplicity. Situations often take the characters to other destinations, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, tropical islands, the Moon, Mars, and some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's invention. The latter includes El Passionato, Kigmyland, The Republic of Crumbumbo, Skunk Hollow, The Valley of the Shmoon, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, and a miserable frozen wasteland known as Lower Slobbovia, a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy that remains a contemporary reference. "Indeed, Li'l Abner incorporates such a panoply of characters and ideas that it defies summary," according to cultural historian Anthony Harkins. "Yet though Capp's storylines often wandered far afield, his hillbilly setting remained a central touchstone, serving both as a microcosm and a distorting carnival mirror of broader American society."
The strip's popularity grew from an original eight papers, to ultimately more than 900. At its peak, Li'l Abner was read daily by 70 million Americans (the U.S. population at the time was only 180 million), with adult readers far outnumbering children. Many communities, high schools and colleges staged Sadie Hawkins dances, patterned after the similar annual event in the strip.
Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. In response to the question “Which side does Abner part his hair on?," Capp would answer, “Both.” Capp said he finally found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with Henry Fonda's character Dave Tolliver, in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). In later years, Capp always claimed to have effectively created the miniskirt, when he first put one on Daisy Mae in 1934.
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