Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays, Vol. 1: 1934-1936 - Hardcover

Capp, Al

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1600106110 ISBN 13: 9781600106118

Publisher: IDW Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

• Head for the hills with The Library of American Comics! Next stop: Dogpatch, the sleepy little home of Pansy and Lucifer Ornamental Yokum and their 19-year-old son, Li'l Abner!
• Eisner Award-winning editor/designer Dean Mullaney and biographical writer Bruce Canwell return to Dogpatch's roots in Volume 1 of The Complete Li'l Abner, containing Al Capp's comedy masterpiece from 1934-1936, including full-color Sunday pages never before collected in book form. Li'l Abner moves to New York to live with his rich aunt and has to dodge both kidnappers and grasping socialites! Back home in Dogpatch, Marrying Sam works to get Abner and gorgeous Daisy Mae to the altar, while shiftless Hannibal Hoops schemes to split them apart! Then it's a classic case of mistaken identity when Li'l Abner's evil twin, the ruthless criminal Gat Garson, comes to town...

-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

About this title

About the Author

Al Capp (1909–1979) was born Alfred Gerald Caplin in New Haven, Connecticut. He created Li’l Abner in 1934. In addition to the enormous popularity of his comic strip, Capp was arguably the most famous cartoonist of his generation. He was a frequent and outspoken guest on 1940s and ‘50s television. The prolific satirist also wrote a syndicated newspaper column, had his own syndicated radio show, and was a frequent guest lecturer at campuses nationwide, a sideline that created a firestorm late in his career. Capp retired Li’l Abner in 1977 after a 43-year run, and died two years later.

Reviews

Its place in the pop-culture landscape has faded, but in its mid-twentieth-century heyday, Li'l Abner was a huge cultural phenomenon, spreading from the funny pages to films and Broadway and making creator Al Capp a celebrity. The strip's family of hillbillies dwelling in comedic squalor in the misbegotten town of Dogpatch was a newspaper mainstay for more than four decades. The artwork may be a bit rough in these earliest installments—the easy balance between cartoonishness and realism that Capp would later achieve here appears tilted more towards the latter—and Capp hadn't yet added the element of satire that would come to distinguish the strip. But the key characters are in place from the very beginning: bighearted, lunkheaded Abner; his loving parents, domineering Mammy and diminutive Pappy; and the alluring Daisy Mae, hopelessly in love with Abner despite his dimwitted indifference. The additional cast of colorful supporting characters is yet to come, but the appealing humor of these initial exploits of the principals clearly points the way to Abner's subsequent and enduring popularity. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: IDW Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1600106110
• ISBN 13: 9781600106118
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288