![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Is (re) taking place over the next few days, over at comics.com. And chances are likely few if anyone reading this knows the first thing about it.
Li'l Abner was one of the most significant comic strips ever to grace a newspaper. Published over four decades, Li'l Abner was chock full of political, financial and pop culture satire, as seen through the eyes of the numbskull hicks who lived in Dogpatch U.S.A. It was the genesis of the Schmoo, the Sadie Hawkins Day race (and the attendant dances), two movies and a fantastically successful Broadway play still performed all over the country (I myself was Marryin' Sam in a Maine production back in the early Nineties).
The lead character, an utterly worthless layabout named Abner Yokem, was pursued by the zaftig, virtuous and dedicated Dogpatch girl Daisy Mae Skaggs from the inception of the strip. She doggedly worked to marry the utterly disinterested Abner, and he continually found ways to avoid his fate... until 1952.
The wedding of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae Yokem was such big news it made the cover of Life Magazine. Newspapers reported it. In the late Seventies, the hoopla was commemerated in an episode of M*A*S*H when, during heavy shelling, radio reports kept coming in to the 4077th on whether or not the pair finally got married. It was the kind of plot resolution (and cultural impact) modern comic artists only dream of.
Well, Comics.com is diligently reprinting Li'l Abner, day by day, and reminding readers of how utterly politically incorrect... and hilariously funny... Kickapoo Joy Juice, Fearless Fosdick (a parody of Dick Tracy that was so brilliant it was turned into a television show. A puppet so, no less), Jubulation T. Cornpone and all the rest of Li'l Abner's work and world were. And we have finally reached March of 1952 in the reprints... which means that we are in the process of watching Li'l Abner be inexorably cornered into marriage.
Give it a look. The sequence starts here, continues to the present day, and within the next few days will -- unless Al Capp comes back from the grave and finds a way to louse it up, and that doesn't seem all that implausible when discussing Li'l Abner -- culminate within the next week or two. This is part of the history of popular culture, and you get to live it for free.
Li'l Abner was one of the most significant comic strips ever to grace a newspaper. Published over four decades, Li'l Abner was chock full of political, financial and pop culture satire, as seen through the eyes of the numbskull hicks who lived in Dogpatch U.S.A. It was the genesis of the Schmoo, the Sadie Hawkins Day race (and the attendant dances), two movies and a fantastically successful Broadway play still performed all over the country (I myself was Marryin' Sam in a Maine production back in the early Nineties).
The lead character, an utterly worthless layabout named Abner Yokem, was pursued by the zaftig, virtuous and dedicated Dogpatch girl Daisy Mae Skaggs from the inception of the strip. She doggedly worked to marry the utterly disinterested Abner, and he continually found ways to avoid his fate... until 1952.
The wedding of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae Yokem was such big news it made the cover of Life Magazine. Newspapers reported it. In the late Seventies, the hoopla was commemerated in an episode of M*A*S*H when, during heavy shelling, radio reports kept coming in to the 4077th on whether or not the pair finally got married. It was the kind of plot resolution (and cultural impact) modern comic artists only dream of.
Well, Comics.com is diligently reprinting Li'l Abner, day by day, and reminding readers of how utterly politically incorrect... and hilariously funny... Kickapoo Joy Juice, Fearless Fosdick (a parody of Dick Tracy that was so brilliant it was turned into a television show. A puppet so, no less), Jubulation T. Cornpone and all the rest of Li'l Abner's work and world were. And we have finally reached March of 1952 in the reprints... which means that we are in the process of watching Li'l Abner be inexorably cornered into marriage.
Give it a look. The sequence starts here, continues to the present day, and within the next few days will -- unless Al Capp comes back from the grave and finds a way to louse it up, and that doesn't seem all that implausible when discussing Li'l Abner -- culminate within the next week or two. This is part of the history of popular culture, and you get to live it for free.