Al Capp

Al Capp (September 28, 1909-November 5, 1979), born Alfred Gerald Caplin, was an American cartoonist and humorist known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and drawing (with help from assistants) until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats (1937-45) and Long Sam (1954). He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning." Li'l Abner was about the fictional Southern town of Dogpatch and reached an estimated 60 million readers in more than 900 American newspapers and 100 more papers in 28 countries internationally. Capp made a fortune through the strip and influenced the way the world viewed the American South. Capp was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of East European Jewish heritage. At the age of nine, Capp was run over by a trolley car and had his left leg amputated above the knee. His father, an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy. He became quite proficient. Among his earliest influences were Punch cartoonist-illustrator Phil May and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus, and Milt Gross. His formal training came from a series of art schools in the New England area. He hitchhiked to New York City and eventually got a job working at the Associated Press and left it in 1932. At this time, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that eventually became Li'l Abner. He based his characters on the mountain-dwellers he met while hitchhiking through rural West Virginia and the Cumberland Valley as a teenager. Li'l Abner was one of the most imaginative, popular, and well-drawn strips of the twentieth century. At its peak, the comic was estimated to have been read daily by 60-70 million Americans.