According to the Boston Globe ( as reported on May 18, 2010 ), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum.

Thematically, the strip draws upon nostalgic childhood experiences, and often has a static, almost limbo-like atmosphere, in a similar manner to its companion strip, Andy Capp.

He has an apparently unpronounceable name, but creator Al Capp " pronounced " Btfsplk by simply blowing a " raspberry ," or Bronx cheer.

Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as Old-time radio and the Burlesque stage.

" Capp has been compared, at various times, to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Rabelais.

According to the Boston Globe ( as reported on May 18, 2010 ), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum.

Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as " natcherly ," schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc.

Capp has appeared as himself on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Today Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and on This Is Your Life on February 12, 1961 with host Ralph Edwards and honoree Peter Palmer.

* The 1989 film I Want to Go Home ( Je Veux Rentrer a la Maison, screenplay by Jules Feiffer ) has a scene where the main character, a retired cartoonist played by Adolph Green, makes an unexpectedly emotional appeal for Al Capp and his legacy.

* Frank Sinatra, who was frequently spoofed by Al Capp in Li ' l Abner, has a line in the MGM musical On the Town ( 1949 ) about cops " multiplyin ' like shmoos!

In British popular culture the flat cap has been associated with older working class men, especially those in northern England, and the west country, as personified by Fred Dibnah and comic strip anti-hero Andy Capp.

Since then he has gone on to become one of the highest-paid stars on British TV, mostly in comedies, appearing in shows such as Only When I Laugh ( as Roy Figgis ), The Beiderbecke Affair ( as Trevor Chaplin ), The Beiderbecke Tapes, Andy Capp ( in the title role ), The Beiderbecke Connection, Second Thoughts ( as Bill MacGregor ), Midsomer Murders, Pay and Display, Dalziel and Pascoe, Close and True, Born and Bred ( as Dr. Arthur Gilder ), and New Tricks ( as Jack Halford ).

* Christopher S. Capp voices Cotton's parrot: A blue and yellow macaw that Cotton has trained to speak for him.

He has appeared in various programmes, including The Beiderbecke Affair, Inspector Morse, The Brittas Empire, Andy Capp, Soldier Soldier, All Creatures Great and Small and even as a photographer who got physical with Mike Baldwin on Coronation Street.

" My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants ," wrote Capp in 1978.

) According to a November 1950 Time article, " Capp parted from Fisher with a definite impression, ( to put it mildly ) that he had been underpaid and unappreciated.

" In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named " Happy Vermin "— a caricature of Fisher — who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet, ( after sacking his previous " temporary " assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process ).

Anderson and his associate Brit Hume confirmed that Capp was shown out of town by university police, but that the incident had been hushed up by the university to avoid negative publicity.

In a December 1992 article for The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that President Richard Nixon and Charles Colson had repeatedly discussed the Capp case in Oval Office recordings that had recently been made available by the National Archives.

On November 13, 1977, Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to declining health.

Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies.

By the time EC Comics published Mad # 1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade.

Li ' l Abner lasted until November 13, 1977, when Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to advancing illness.

Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies.

In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp lost his left leg in a trolley accident.

Capp spent five years at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut without receiving a diploma.

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

“ 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.

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 ).

( Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a Superman story in Action Comics # 55, December 1942, in which a cartoonist named " Al Hatt " invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly " Tiny Rufe.

In 1948, Capp reached a creative peak with the introduction of the Shmoos, lovable and innocent fantasy creatures who reproduced at amazing speed and brought so many benefits that, ironically, the world economy was endangered.

According to one anecdote ( from Al Capp Remembered, 1994 ), Capp and his brother Elliot ducked out of a dull party at Capp's home — leaving Walt Kelly alone to fend for himself entertaining a group of Argentine envoys who didn't speak English.

Milton Caniff offered another anecdote ( from Phi Beta Pogo, 1989 ) involving Capp and Walt Kelly, " two boys from Bridgeport, Connecticut, nose to nose ," onstage at a meeting of the Newspaper Comics Council in the sixties.

Cartoonist Mell Lazarus, creator of Miss Peach and Momma, wrote a comic novel in 1963 titled The Boss Is Crazy, Too which was partly inspired by his apprenticeship days working with Capp and his brother Elliot at Toby.

Besides his use of the comic strip to voice his opinions and display his humor, Capp was a popular guest speaker at universities, and on radio and television.

Between 1952 and 1972, he hosted at least five television shows – three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show ( 1952 and 1968 ) and Al Capp ( 1971 –' 72 ), Al Capp's America ( a live " chalk talk ," with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons, 1954 ), and a CBS game show called Anyone Can Win ( 1953 ).

Capp had earlier provided the Shmoo for a special Children's Savings Bond in 1949, accompanying President Harry S. Truman at the bond's unveiling ceremony.

The album features his interaction with students at Fresno State College ( now California State University, Fresno ) on such topics as " sensitivity training ," " humanitarianism ," " abstract art " ( Capp hated it ), and of course, " student protest.

On April 22, 1971, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported allegations that Capp made indecent advances to four female students when he was invited to speak at the University of Alabama in February 1968.

The following month, Capp was charged in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in connection with another alleged incident following his April 1 lecture at Wisconsin State University-Eau Claire.

A lifelong chain smoker, Capp died in 1979 from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire.

Born in Chicago, Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp.

* Laugh at Life with Andy Capp ( No. 12 ) ( 1964 )

* Andy Capp at 50 ( 2006 ) David and Charles Books

* Laugh at Life with Andy Capp ( 1983 ) Castle