Burton Lane and Lerner were working on a musical about Li ' l Abner.

Alfred Gerald Caplin ( September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979 ), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li ' l Abner.

" I do Li ' l Abner!

!," a self-portrait by Al Capp, excerpted from theApril 16 – 17, 1951 Li ' l Abner strips.

( Leviticus was actually much closer to Capp's later villains Lem and Luke Scragg, than to the much more appealing and innocent Li ' l Abner.

Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that would eventually become Li ' l Abner.

) Leaving Joe Palooka, Capp sold Li ' l Abner to United Feature Syndicate ( now known as United Media ).

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.

" Indeed, Li ' l Abner incorporates such a panoply of characters and ideas that it defies summary ," according to cultural historian Anthony Harkins.

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.

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 ).

Li ' l Abner also features a comic strip-within-the-strip: Fearless Fosdick is a parody of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy.

Besides Dick Tracy, Capp parodied many other comic strips in Li ' l Abner — including Steve Canyon, Superman ( at least twice ; first as " Jack Jawbreaker " in 1947, and again in 1966 as " Chickensouperman "), Mary Worth, Peanuts, Rex Morgan, M. D., Little Annie Rooney and Little Orphan Annie ( in which Punjab became " Punjbag ," an oleaginous slob ).

Capp was just as likely to parody himself ; his self-caricature made frequent, tongue-in-cheek appearances in Li ' l Abner.

" Just about anything could be a target for Capp's satire — in one storyline Li ' l Abner is revealed to be the missing link between ape and man.

In addition to creating Li ' l Abner, Capp also co-created two other newspaper strips: Abbie an ' Slats with magazine illustrator Raeburn van Buren in 1937, and Long Sam with cartoonist Bob Lubbers in 1954, as well as the Sunday " topper " strips Washable Jones, Small Fry ( aka Small Change ), and Advice fo ' Chillun.

According to comics historian Coulton Waugh, a 1947 poll of newspaper readers who claimed they ignored the comics page altogether revealed that many confessed to making a single exception: Li ' l Abner.

" When Li ' l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers.

Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li ' l Abner.

According to Marschall, Li ' l Abner gradually evolved into a broad satire of human nature.

Over the years, Li ' l Abner has been adapted to radio, animated cartoons, stage production, motion pictures and television.

" John Updike, comparing Abner to a “ hillbilly Candide ,” added that the strip ’ s “ richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean .” Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes and ( reportedly ) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li ' l Abner.

Li ' l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of an American comic strip ever published.

In October 1947, Li ' l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Comic Strip Syndicate.

Li ' l Abner was censored for the first, but not the last time in September 1947, and was pulled from papers by Scripps-Howard.

* Capp, Al, Newsweek Magazine ( November 24, 1947 ) " Li ' l Abner's Mad Capp "

Li ' l Abner was censored in September 1947 and was pulled from papers by Scripps-Howard.

* 1947: Al Capp, Li ' l Abner

** Frances Yip 葉麗儀 / 叶丽仪 ( 1947 -; Huiyang, Guangdong ; born in Hong Kong ; Hakka pronunciation: Rhap Li Ngi ), Singer / entertainer

But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $ 14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li ' l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year.

In October 1947, Li ' l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at UFS.

Through Li ' l Abner, the American comic strip achieved unprecedented relevance in the postwar years, attracting new readers who were more intellectual, more informed on current events, and less likely to read the comics ( according to Coulton Waugh, author of The Comics, 1947 ).

In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist " Al Slapp ," creator of " Li ' l Adam.

" Li ' l Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy, Salomey and Pappy survive another narrow scrape in this strip excerpt from March 29, 1947.

* Li ' l Abner was censored for the first, but not the last time in September 1947, and was pulled from papers by Scripps-Howard.

* Capp, Al, Newsweek Magazine ( November 24, 1947 ) " Li ' l Abner's Mad Capp "

From 1947 to 1949, the newspaper printed the comic strip Li ' l Folks, by St. Paul native Charles M. Schulz.

* The Last Li ' l Eight Ball story from New Funnies # 128 ( August 1947 )

During their 1947 – 1948 expeditions to Tibet, Govinda and Li Gotami met Ajo Repa Rinpoche, who, according to Govinda, initiated them into the Kagyüpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.

In 1947 he married the Parsi artist Li Gotami ( original name Ratti Petit, 22. 4. 1906-18. 8. 1988 ) from Bombay, who, as a painter, had been his student at Santinekan in 1934.

Li ' l Folks, the first comic strip by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, was a weekly panel that appeared mainly in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from June 22, 1947 to January 22, 1950.