The (Sob!) Ugliest

Cautious cables from the never-never land of Lower Slobbovia (TIME, Oct. 7) described the immigrant as "age 18, single, female of some species, maybe human." This week the displaced Slobbovian, billed as the ugliest woman alive, landed in the U.S. and in the funnies. Her name: Lena the Hyena.

Cartoonist Al Capp, who invented Lena to rib fellow Cartoonist Chester (Dick Tracy) Gould's horrifying collection of comic characters, insisted that his own Lena was too ugly for him to draw. He asked the 27,000,000 readers of Li'l Abner to show their notions of how she looked. It turned out to be the comic promotion stunt of the year: everybody seemed to want to draw the ugliest woman alive, and a million repulsive drawings came in. Capp and three strong-stomached judges (Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, Salvador Dali) picked the worst of the lot (see cut), awarded her creator, Basil Wolverton, a Vancouver, Wash, comic-book artist, a $500 prize.

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