Li'l Abner Comes to the Journal – June 1953

Cartoonist Al Capp's popular Li'l Abner comic strip has been the subject of numerous posts on my blog over the years. It was my favorite comic in the Lorain Journal, and for years I looked forward to reading it when the paper came late in the afternoon, especially when the continuity involved Li'l Abner's 'ideel,' Fearless Fosdick.

Since I spend a lot of time reading old Journals while prepping material for this blog, I've noticed that Li'l Abner wasn't in the paper all during the 1930s and 40s. So when did it finally show up?

The small ad above in the June 1, 1953 edition of the Journal provided the answer. It had been mixed in with a bunch of other ads on the movie page and I almost missed it.

Of course, I had to go back and review previous editions to see if there was a full-fledged teaser campaign. There wasn't (unlike what had been done for Dennis the Menace). I only found one front page ad from May 29, 1953, featuring Old Man Mose. He was the bearded, ill-tempered fortune teller who lived in a Dogpatch cave that Li'l Abner went to for advice. His predictions were always somewhat cryptic and told in rhyme, but they always came true.

The Journal did make one small mention of the addition of Li'l Abner (and Abbie an' Slats, another Capp creation) on May 26th.

Li'l Abner was still at the height of its popularity in 1953, so it was probably a pretty big deal that the Journal was going to run it. And it very likely wasn't cheap either. 

As for me, I became aware of Li'l Abner in the mid to late 1960s. Dad had an old 78 of Li'l Abner, Don't Marry that Girl in his record collection.

We had an old newspaper comic section from 1952 with Li'l Abner in it, down in our basement, lining a Christmas decoration box, I think. There was a one-shot TV show that appeared around 1967, and we were getting the Plain Dealer on Sundays, which included Li'l Abner, (but only on that day, not weekdays). So I was well aware of the strip.

I loved the humor of it, especially the hilariously violent "Fearless Fosdick" strip-within-a-strip. I eventually clipped Li'l Abner every day for several years, beginning with the adventure that started with this strip that ran on May 15, 1970.

In the story, a police informant wants to give Fosdick some evidence incriminating his gang. But the malnourished detective is more interested in the steak served up by his longtime fiancée, so he makes him wait.

May 16, 1970

May 18, 1970

May 19, 1970

May 20, 1970

May 21, 1970

May 22, 1970

May 25, 1970

May 26, 1970

As a result, the informer is gunned down by his old gang, who wants the evidence hidden in his suit. 

May 27, 1970

May 28, 1970

But Fosdick ends up with the suit because his old one is worn out and he can't afford a new one. 

May 29, 1970

May 30, 1970

The rest of the story concerns the efforts of the gang to get the suit back from Fosdick.

Al Capp's Column Comes to the Journal – Feb. 1961

One of the recurring themes on this blog is the death of newspapers in the modern era. It changed the American way of life for the worse, and society has suffered for it, becoming much less informed. 

And I experience the melancholy and regret every time I post a page from the Lorain Journal of the past.

Capp and his famous creations

I've mentioned several times how reading the Journal each evening was a ritual in our house after dinner. Dad sat in the living room and seemingly read every page, top to bottom. Mom sat at the kitchen table after dinner and read whatever sections Dad was done with.

As for me, in the late 1960s I remember bringing in the Journal (after the paper boy delivered it in the late afternoon) and sneaking a peek at what was going on in Li'l Abner by Al Capp – especially when the story concerned "Fearless Fosdick."

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that for a time, Capp wrote a humor column for the Journal. It's pretty impressive, considering that besides producing Li'l Abner and running the huge organization merchandising the famous characters, Capp was also involved in a few other comic strips behind the scenes. But it makes sense, seeing that at that time, Capp was one of the country's greatest satirists.

Here is the announcement on Feb. 17, 1961 that the Journal would be carrying his new three-days-a-week column.

And in that same edition of the Journal, the paper wasted no time in drumming up some hype for the new column by inserting some tiny ads throughout its pages. It's kind of fun seeing these ads surrounded by well-remembered Lorain businesses.

On Feb. 18, 1961 the Journal ran this large ad.

On Feb. 20th, 1961 this ad ran.

And here are a few samples of the column. The first one is from the first week the Journal carried it.

Feb. 22, 1961

I like Capp's idea about judging a man by the type of necktie he wears. According to Capp, since I preferred to wear the same tie to work for years (a navy blue one), I was a coward and a sneak, who should be kept away "from the petty cash, the car-keys and your daughter."

And here's one from about a year later (March 10, 1962).

It doesn't appear that Al Capp's column was a long-term venture. It seemed to disappear from the Journal's pages by the summer of 1962.

I was too young to remember any of this, but when I was older and working in Cleveland, I enjoyed the syndicated column by Mike Royko in the Plain Dealer. I liked Royko's easy to understand style of writing. Later, I enjoyed the columns of Bob Greene.

Today, I don't subscribe to any newspaper – preferring to occasionally pick one up at the newsstand (whichever looks most interesting). Unfortunately, humor columns seem to have been one of the casualties of these humorless times for newspapers.

****

Li'l Abner and Al Capp have been the subjects of many of my blog posts.

Frankies Ad Featuring Li'l Abner – May 23, 1962

Cartoonist Al Capp was the master when it came to merchandising his beloved comic strip Li'l Abner. 

Capp allowed his popular hillbilly characters to be used to sell everything from Cream of Wheat to laundry detergent. (Fearless Fosdick, Capp's parody of Dick Tracy and Li'l Abner's "ideel," also was featured in a series of ads for Wildroot Cream-Oil Hair Tonic.)

And here's yet another advertising campaign using the denizens of Dogpartch – this time for Superior's Frankies, the "Keener Wiener." The ad above appeared in the Lorain Journal back on May 23, 1962 – sixty years ago this month.

The ad campaign was fairly late in the strip's life, past its prime of the 40s and 50s. But apparently the folks at Superior's Frankies were still confident that Li'l Abner and his family could dee-liver the goods.

It's an entertaining ad, with Li'l Abner lying in a hammock, squirting a condiment on his Frankie using one of the very dispensers being promoted in the ad. Li'l Abner's son, "Honest Abe" Yokum is handling one as well, while curvaceous wife Daisy Mae holds a whole tray of dee-licious Frankies. 

Here are a couple of the Frankies mustard and ketchup dispensers (which I mentioned back here on this post).

Li'l Abner (my favorite comic strip) has popped up on this blog several times. Tomorrow, we'll look at another ad that appeared in the Journal in the early 1970s, using a lovable, well-known beagle to sell bread.

Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters – 1956

Yesterday’s post about air raid sirens and civil defense in general reminded me that I had this comic book in my file. It’s entitled “Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters!” and enlists the aid of famed cartoonist Al Capp to elevate it a bit, entertainment-wise.

Who is Mr. Civil Defense?

Mr. Civil Defense is an advertising mascot designed by Capp. He’s short and blond haired, with the stylized “CD” civil defense logo making up most of his body. He’s a little cocky, and wears a civil defense helmet, which tilts forward, covering up one eye. 

Of course, the real star of the comic book is Li’l Abner, the star of Capp’s popular syndicated comic strip. Li’l Abner appears prominently on the cover, but by page two (in a good example of bait-and-switch) he is shown riding off in the distance on a donkey, heading back to Dogpatch (for a first-aid lesson) and turning the story over to Mr. Civil Defense.

Mr. Civil Defense then narrates the story, appearing on every page to interact with the citizens of a typical small town to offer educational tidbits about preparing for natural disasters and other emergencies.

Here is the book in its entirety. It’s copyrighted 1956.

****

The comic book gives you a lot to think about. 

For me, the scenes of the flooded city strike home. Living in Vermilion for the past few years, I’m easily reminded of the massive flooding that occurred as a result of the notorious July 4, 1969 storm. Those illustrations of the city under water also bring to mind the Vermilion River overflowing its banks when December snow melts too quickly during a warm, rainy January.

Although I’m skeptical that any of the local communities are as well prepared as the city depicted in the comic book, at least Lorain County has the Lorain County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

Sunday Mirror Comics Page – December 28, 1952

I mentioned several times on this blog how Li’l Abner was my favorite comic strip when I was a kid.

Natcherly, then, I was excited when this Sunday, December 28, 1952 Sunday Mirror comics section – from 64 years ago today – turned up in the basement of our home in the late 1960s.

(I have no idea what the comic section of a New York paper was doing in our cellar. It’s the same one that included this Our Boarding House strip that I posted back here.)

Anyway, this strip provided cartoonist Al Capp another opportunity to parody another comic strip and present it as one that one of his characters is reading.

Normally, Li’l Abner’s favorite comic “Fearless Fosdick,” is the strip-within-a-strip. But this comic does something different. It features one that Daisy Mae is reading: "Sweet Fanny Gooney," a takeoff of Little Orphan Annie, with some Little Annie Rooney thrown in.

In view of today’s headlines, this episodes is somewhat topical, with Russians as the villains. Here, a Communist impostor switches places with Annie’s rich “Uncle Sawbuck” (a take-off on "Daddy Warbucks") and threatens to disrupt our Capitalist system.

I thought it was amusing that the caretaker of the Ritz-Carlton Orphan Asylum for Millionaire Orphans cruelly denies poor, rich Sweet Fanny Gooney a peanut-butter sandwich, stating “Only (Ha! Ha!) poor people, like me, can have (Yum! Yum!) peanut butter sandwiches!!”

I may have to renew my subscription to one of the online newspaper archives services to find out how this adventure ended!

A few panels from the next installment
(Courtesy james-vance.com)

Li’l Abner Takes on Peanuts – October 1968

Courtesy DenisKitchen.com

I’ve mentioned Li’l Abner, the classic comic strip created by Al Capp on this blog a few times (here and here). It was my favorite comic strip in the late 1960s, and I really looked forward to reading it every night back then in the Journal.

My other favorite strip was Peanuts. Unfortunately, the Journal didn’t carry it in the 1960s, so my exposure to Charlie Brown and Snoopy was limited to the TV specials and the paperbacks that reprinted the strips.

Anyway, Li’l Abner poked fun at popular culture, and eventually Al Capp got around to lampooning Peanuts – 47 years ago this month, resulting in a highly publicized fracas with Charles Shultz.

In Al Capp’s satire, the strip (as well as the character based on Charlie Brown) was called Pee Wee. Like Peanuts, Pee Wee’s humor was based on very adult and intellectual things coming out of the mouths of little kids.

Here’s the plot. Hilariously, it’s revealed that the only reason that Bedly Damp, the cartoonist (drawn to look like Charles Schulz) was able to make his kid characters talk like that was because a psychiatrist lived next door and was always talking to Damp while he drew the strip. When the psychiatrist moves away, the strip loses its intellectual influence, which is a disaster. The syndicate (worried about their highly profitable business based on the success of the strip) then consequently fires Bedly Damp, and hires the psychiatrist to write it! Seeking someone with no artistic talent (a dig at Charles Schulz’s simple style) to draw it, they end up hiring Li’l Abner, who can barely draw at all.

Pee Wee himself is drawn as a goofy-looking, buck-toothed kid with a belly. His dog Croopy fantasizes being “Captain Eddie Rickenbarker, the flying ace,” but instead of “flying” on top of his dog house as Snoopy does in Peanuts, he merely flaps his ears to get airborne.

Here are the strips, which ran on successive Sundays in October 1968. (They appear here courtesy of kmunson-mac.blogspot.com.) Click on each for a larger, slightly more readable version.

Alas, the series ended right there, as Al Capp pulled the plug on the storyline because of Charles Schulz’s unhappiness with the whole thing.

Here is the short article (below) that appeared on the front page of the Journal on October 17, 1968 explaining it all.

****

Cartoonists at War Over Parody of Peanuts
By Jack Smith
The Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – Cartoonist Al Capp, whose Li’l Abner strip has lampooned American heroes from Dick Tracy to Lyndon Johnson, said yesterday he has dropped a sequence that parodies the wildly popular Peanuts.

“It is blasphemy, isn’t it?” Capp laughed in disclosing that Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts strip, had protested the parody which first appeared in last Sunday’s comic pages.

“I told him I was flattered by the attention,” Schulz said, “but I didn’t think it was very funny.”

Capp, in a telephone interview, said two more Sunday strips in his Peanuts parody had already been distributed through his syndicate but he has drawn no more.

CAPP SAID he had received a letter from Shultz expressing displeasure over the Li’l Abner takeoff on the Peanuts gang.

In the first parody Capp suggests that Schulz’ Peanuts children talk the way they do because Schulz lives next door to a psychiatrist who always talks to him as he works.

The Li’l Abner spoof also caricatured the Peanuts success in other fields – books, clothing, theater, advertising tie-ins – with a fictional “Pee Wee Unlimited.”

“I DIDN’T THINK it was very clever,” Schulz said. “I don’t mind parody if it’s clever. I thought it was rather dull and heavyhanded.”

“I guess there really are some subjects that one doesn’t laugh about," Capp said.

Capp praised Schulz as humorist and an artist, and indicated he was dropping the Peanuts parody only because Schulz was a fellow cartoonist.

Schulz expressed doubt that Capp abandoned the Peanuts parody only out of respect for his feelings.

“IF THE TRUTH were known,” Schulz said, “he probably couldn’t get anything funny out of it and went on to something else.”

****

I don’t know if I agree with Schulz or not, as I thought the Pee Wee storyline was pretty hilarious when I was a kid, reading it in the Sunday Plain Dealer.

Nevertheless, if you’d like to read an excellent behind-the-scenes analysis of this historic comic strip confrontation, click here to visit Kim Munson’s blog and read “Al Capp & Charles Schulz: Clash of the Titans."