Dogpatch Is Ready for Freddie

After 43 years, Al Capp decides to hang up his pen

Amoozin' but confoozin', as Daisy Mae might fret. The frost is on the turnip down in Dogpatch, but no date has yet been set yet for this year's Sadie Hawkins Day, that highly moveable feast on which Marryin' Sam will obligingly hitch a fleet-hoofed gal to any hapless bachelor she can catch. Finally, at Daisy Mae's insistence, Cartoonist Al Capp hisself makes a rare appearance in the strip to schedule the prenuptial foot race for Nov. 26. Snorts a disgusted Li'l Abner: "Ha!--Any day is okay when an--ugh! --Dogpatch maiden kin ketch--sob!--a Dogpatch bachelor!!"

The fateful day--gulp!--will never come. Shortly after Capp, 68, penned this panel last month at his Boston studio, he signaled his retirement. The frog-voiced, razor-witted Daumier of Dogpatch for purt' near 44 years casually told an assistant: "You can stop cutting the paper. I'm not going to draw any more." Last week Capp disclosed that he will have no successor. Said he: "I've tried one or two people, and it was clear that there would be an awful change." His last weekday strip will appear in newspapers on Nov. 5; his last Sunday color sequence --featuring that peerless detective, Fearless Fosdick--will be published on Nov. 13.

Though gone from the papers, many of Capp's creations will live on. Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae long ago slipped into American language and folklore, together with the other denizens of Capp's hillbilly heaven, where Mammy Yokum defended her ragtag family and shaky log cabin against the likes of zoot-suited Evil-Eye Fleegle and his triple whammy. Joe Btfsplk and his perpetual cloud rained down bad luck on almost everyone, and the unluckiest ended up in the hands of Freddie the undertaker. The shmoos rolled over dead and oven ready for hungry hoomins. Hulking Hairless Joe and his faithful Indian sidekick, Lonesome Polecat, dispensed hair-curling batches of Kickapoo Joy Juice. Dogpatchers went calling on the snowbound citizens of Lower Slobbovia, home of Lena the Hyena, world's ugliest woman. Moonbeam McSwine wallowed happily in the mud and tried unsuccessfully to ensnare Abner with her buxom charms. As Capp once said of his curvaceous creations: "Anyone who likes small bosoms --let 'em read Orphan Annie."

Capp, who grew up Dogpatch poor in New Haven and Bridgeport, Conn., originated Li'I Abner in 1934. It was the first humorous strip to attempt serious political satire and was an almost instant success, appearing in roughly 900 newspapers by the late 1960s. At his peak, Capp earned more than $500,000 a year from the strip and its numerous spinoffs, including a Broadway musical and two movies.

There was much about the 1960s that Capp did not like: he made the comic folk of Dogpatch share their panels with radical folk singer Joanie Phoanie and hairy thugs from S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything). Capp gradually alienated his college-age audience, which switched to more congenial strips like Walt Kelly's Pogo and Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. Today fewer than 400 papers still carry Li'l Abner. For a while, Capp remained a perverse favorite on the campus lecture circuit. But he became something of a recluse after 1972, when a judge in Eau Claire, Wis., fined him $500 for attempted adultery--a crime in Wisconsin--with a state university coed.

Capp insists that he is quitting because of ill health. Says he: "I've had a great shortness of breath for the past five or six years. I really couldn't go on with it. I just can't breathe." He admits parting with his characters is a wrench: "I keep thinking of all kinds of things to do with Li'l Abner even now. But he's had the most fantastic run for 43 years, and I think this is a decent way to end it all."Sob!

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