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Al Capp (born Alfred Gerald Caplin) was an American cartoonist and humorist from New Haven, Connecticut. He is primarily known for creating the comic strip "Li'l Abner" (1934-1977), which depicted the lives of a fictional clan of hillbillies in an impoverished mountain village. At its prime the strip had 60 million readers in more than 900 American newspapers, and was also reprinted in 28 foreign countries. Capp won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year. He posthumously won their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning".

In 1909, Capp was born in New Haven, Connecticut to a family of Latvian Jews. His parents were Otto Philip Caplin (1885-1964) and his wife Matilda Davidson (1884-1948). Their respective families had migrated from Latvia to the United States in the 1880s, in order to escape pogroms in the Russian Empire. Capp grew up in poverty, and had several younger siblings. His brothers Elliot and Jerome went on their own careers as cartoonists, while his sister Madeline became a publicist.

In August 1919, Capp was run down by a trolley car. He had his left leg amputated above the knee, and awoke from a days-long coma to discover that he was missing a limb. Capp was eventually given a prosthetic leg, and adopted a slow way of walking. His childhood tragedy reportedly led him to develop a darker worldview, and a more sardonic sense of humor than other cartoonists of his time. Capp's father was an amateur cartoonist, and introduced his son to drawing as a form of therapy. Capp studied the art styles of the illustrator Phil May, and the then-popular comic strip cartoonists Billy DeBeck, Rudolph Dirks, Tad Dorgan, Rube Goldberg, Milt Gross, George McManus, Fred Opper, and Cliff Sterrett.

Capp attended Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but never gained a high school diploma. In adult life, he claimed that he kept failing his geometry class. Capp subsequently wished to become a professional cartoonist, and took classes in three different art schools: the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Designers Art School (located in Boston). He was kicked out of all three for nonpayment of tuition. Due to his impoverished background, Capp had trouble in financing his education.

In early 1932, Capp hitchhiked his way to New York City. He settled himself in Greenwich Village, and supported himself by drawing advertising strips for a meager fee. By March 1932, Capp had been hired as a cartoonist by the Associated Press. He was disappointed that they wanted him to take over "Colonel Gilfeather", a comic strip created by Dick Dorgan, instead of allowing him to create his own strip. He revamped the strip, but eventually grew fed up with the task. Capp left the Associated Press in September 1932, and left New York City as well. He temporarily moved back to Boston, in order to marry his girlfriend Catherine Wingate Cameron. They had met as classmates in an art class.

In 1933, Capp moved back to New York City in search of a job. He reportedly only had about 5 dollars in his pocket during his return. He was hired as a ghost writer and ghost artist for the boxing-theme comic strip "Joe Palooka", while Ham Fisher remained the strip's sole credited writer. In an early story arc for this strip, Capp introduced a new character. He was Big Leviticus, an oafish mountaineer. He turned out be a crude prototype for Lil'Abner.

While still working as a ghost writer, Capp had started developing ideas about a comic strip focused on depicting mountain-dwellers. During his teen years, Capp had hitchhiked his way through rural West Virginia and the Cumberland Valley. He believed that the locals could inspire a decent strip. Capp sold "Li'l Abner" (the new strip) to the United Feature Syndicate, and was hired as its main artist. The strip was launched on August 13, 1934, printed on only 8 different newspapers. The strip soon became much more successful, because Capp had a talent for creating outlandish characters and bizarre situations. He also included both black humor and social commentary into his stories.

Until 1934, Capp still used his real name when signing a strip. His syndicate asked him to start using a simpler name which could fir into fit into a cartoon frame. He chose Al Capp as his professional name, and had his name changed legally in 1949. Capp eventually created sub-series for his comic strip, which satirized other comic strip. The most successful of these parodies was Fearless Fosdick (1942-1977), a parody version of "Dick Tracy".

Besides the popular "Li'l Abner", Capp went on to create two other comic strips. He co-created "Abbie an' Slats" (1937-1971). The strip's protagonist duo were the spinster Abigail "Abbie" Scrapple and her orphaned cousin Aubrey Eustace "Slats" Scrapple, sharing a household. Capp remained the strip's main writer from 1937 to 1945, but was then replaced by his brother Elliot Caplin. The strip was syndicated to about 400 newspapers, but never became the major hit that Capp had hoped for. Capp then went on to co-create "Long Sam" (1954-1962), featuring a tall and attractive mountain girl as a protagonist. The strip is considered an example of "good girl art" in comics, art focusing on attractive young women in skimpy or form-fitting clothing. While briefly popular in its own right, this strip faced frequent changes in writing staff which led to an early cancellation.

During the 1950s, Capp was an outspoken liberal, and satirized politician Joseph McCarthy for (in his words) "terrifying the helpless and naive". During the 1960s, Capp's favorite targets for satire included campus radicals, hippies, and counterculture icons. He harshly criticized militant antiwar demonstrators and student political groups. Capp started being viewed as reactionary by the public at large, though he vocally supported struggles for racial equality and gay rights.

In 1972, Capp was arrested in Wisconsin on charges of "attempted adultery", as adultery was a felony in this state. He was accused of propositioning a married woman. The resulting negative publicity led to hundreds of newspapers dropping his comic strip. The popularity of "Li'l Abner" further declined over the following years, largely due to a perceived decline in Capp's own humor. Capp was in poor health at the time, and he was not as inventive as he once was. Capp announced his retirement on November 13, 1977, publicly admitting that he had stayed on longer than he should have.

In November 1979, Capp died from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire. His illness was caused by a lifetime of chain smoking, and he was 70-years-old at the time of his death. Capp was buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Capp was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2004. Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies.

As far as unwed mothers on welfare are concerned, it seems to me they must be capable of some other form of labor.

[on hippies] I have no objection to any herd of semi-domesticated animals roaming the country, uttering their mating cries and scratching their pelts, as long as they avoid centers of civilization and congregate only in university auditoriums.

[from a 1964 letter of advice to a young Wisconsin boy] I understand you have lost a leg and of course you&#39;re not exactly happy about it. I was about your age when I lost mine and I have learned a few things since then,I which you probably have not had time yet to find out for yourself. The main trick is not to keep remembering what you&#39;ve lost, but all the rest you have left. When you can do that, other people will too, not because they are afraid of hurting you, but because it just won&#39;t be important. The next step is to get to be the master of your artificial limb and to start doing all the things you did before, just as soon as possible. I will not tell you that your artificial leg will do the job your real one did, anymore than glasses are better than eyes, but it does a pretty darn good job, and soon enough it will mean no more to you than glasses do to those who wear them. Of all the major misfortunes that can happen to the human body, the loss of a leg is perhaps the least. I don&#39;t expect you to know that now, but you will know it. Good luck!

Quotes

Al Capp

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