Li'l Abner

Little Abner Yokum: Abner was 6' 3" and perpetually 19 "years" old. A naïve, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly, he lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. Capp derived the family name "Yokum" as a combination of yokel and hokum. In Capp's satirical and often complex plots, Abner was a country bumpkin Candide — a paragon of innocence in a sardonically dark and cynical world.[4] Abner typically had no visible means of support, but sometimes earned his livelihood as a "crescent cutter" for the Little Wonder Privy Company, later changed to "mattress tester" for the Stunned Ox Mattress Company. During World War II, Abner was "drafted" into becoming the mascot emblem of the Patrol Boat Squadron 29. In one post-World War II story line Abner became a US Air Force bodyguard of Steve Cantor (a parody of Steve Canyon) against the evil bald female spy Jewell Brynner (a parody of actor Yul Brynner).[5] Early in the strip's history, Abner's primary goal in life was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, the virtuous, voluptuous, barefoot Dogpatch damsel and scion of the Yokums blood feud enemies — the Scraggs, her bloodthirsty, semi-evolved kinfolk. For 18 years, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital cross hairs time and time again. When Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to tie the knot, it was a major media event. It even made the cover of Life magazine on March 31, 1952 — illustrating an article by Capp titled "It's Hideously True!! The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) Wed!!"

Daisy Mae Yokum (née Scragg): Beautiful Daisy Mae was hopelessly in love with Dogpatch's most prominent resident throughout the entire 43-year run of Al Capp's comic strip. During most of the epic, the impossibly dense Abner exhibited little romantic interest in her voluptuous charms (much of it visible daily thanks to her famous polka-dot peasant blouse and cropped skirt).[6] In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip "ideal," Fearless Fosdick. Fosdick's own wedding to longtime fiancée Prudence Pimpleton turned out to be a dream — but Abner and Daisy's ceremony, performed by Marrying' Sam, was permanent. Abner and Daisy Mae's nuptials were a major source of media attention, landing them on the aforementioned cover of Life magazine's March 31, 1952, issue.[7] Once married, Abner became relatively domesticated. Like Mammy Yokum and the other "womenfolk" in Dogpatch, Daisy Mae did all the work, domestic and otherwise — while the useless menfolk generally did nothing whatsoever.

Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "society" leader and bare knuckle "champion" of the town of Dogpatch. She had married the inconsequential Pappy Yokum in 1902; they produced two strapping sons twice their own size. Mammy dominated the Yokum clan through the force of her personality, and dominated everyone else with her fearsome right uppercut (sometimes known as her "Goodnight, Irene" punch), which helped her uphold law, order and decency.[8] She is consistently the toughest character throughout Li'l Abner. A superhuman dynamo, Mammy did all the household chores — and provided her charges with no fewer than eight meals a day of "pork chops" and "turnips" (as well as local Dogpatch delicacies like "candied catfish eyeballs" and "bean soup"). Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has spoken!", signaled the end of all further discussion. Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil because it's nicer!" (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.)

Pappy Yokum: Born Lucifer Ornamental Yokum, pint-sized Pappy had the misfortune of being the patriarch in a family that didn't have one. Pappy was so lazy and ineffectual, he didn't even bathe himself. Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). Ironing Pappy's trousers fell under her wifely duties as well, although she didn't bother with preliminaries — like waiting for Pappy to remove them first.[9] Pappy is dull-witted and gullible (in one story line after he is conned by Marrying Sam into buying Vanishing cream because he thinks it makes him invisible when he picks a fight with his nemesis Earthquake McGoon), but not completely without guile. He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed — much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. Pappy Yokum wasn't always feckless, however. After his lower wisdom teeth grew so long that they squeezed his cerebral Goodness Gland and emerged as forehead horns, he proved himself capable of evil. Of course Mammy solved the problem with a tooth extraction, and ended the episode with her most famous dictum.

Honest Abe Yokum: Little Abner and Daisy Mae's little boy was born in 1953 "after a pregnancy that ambled on so long that readers began sending me medical books," wrote Capp. Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal.[10] His first words were "pork chop," and that remained his favorite food. Though his uncle Tiny was perpetually frozen at 15½ "years" old, Honest Abe gradually grew from infant to grade school age, and became a dead ringer for Washable Jones — the star of Capp's early "topper" strip. He would eventually acquire a couple of supporting character friends for his own semi-regularly featured adventures in the strip. In one story line he lives up to his nickname when during a nationwide search for George Washington’s missing socks (the finder gets to shake the President of the United States hand); after dishonestly producing a fraudulent pair, he confess to the truth at the last second.

Tiny Yokum: "Tiny" was a misnomer; Little Abner's kid brother remained perpetually innocent and 15½ "years" old — despite the fact that he was an imposing, 7-foot (2.1 m) tall behemoth. Tiny was unknown to the strip until September 1954, when a relative who had been raising him reminded Mammy that she'd given birth to a second child while visiting 15 years earlier. (The relative explained she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Little Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period.[11] Pursued by local lovelies Hopeful Mud and Boy-less Bailey, Tiny was even dumber and more awkward than Abner, if that can be imagined. Tiny initially sported a bulbous nose like both of his parents, but eventually, (through a plot contrivance) he was given a nose job, and his shaggy blond hair was buzz cut to make him more appealing.

Salomey: The Yokums' beloved pet. Cute, lovable and intelligent (arguably smarter than Abner, Tiny or Pappy), she was accepted as part of the family ("the youngest," as Mammy invariably introduces her). She is 100% "Hammus Alabammus" — an adorable species of pig, and the last female known in existence. A plump, juicy Hammus Alabammus is the rarest and most vital ingredient of "ecstasy sauce," an indescribably delicious gourmet delicacy. Consequently, Salomey is frequently targeted by unscrupulous sportsmen, hog breeders and gourmands (like J.R. Fangsley and Bounder J. Roundheels), as well as unsavory boars with improper intentions (such as Boar Scarloff and Porknoy). Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome.

• Marryin' Sam: A traveling (by mule) preacher who specializes in $2 weddings. He also offered the $8 "ultra-deluxe speshul," a spectacular ceremony in which Sam officiates while being drawn and quartered by four rampaging jackasses. He cleans up once a year — during Sadie Hawkins Day season, when slow-footed bachelors are dragged kicking and screaming to the altar by their prospective brides-to-be.[12] Sam, whose face and figure were reportedly modeled after New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia,[13] started out as a stock villain but gradually softened into a genial, opportunistic comic foil. He wasn't above chicanery to achieve his ends, and was warily viewed by Dogpatch menfolk as a traitor to his gender. Sam was prominently featured on the cover of Life in 1952 when he presided over the celebrated wedding of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae. In the 1956 Broadway musical and 1959 film adaptation, Sam was played by rotund actor Stubby Kaye.
• Moonbeam McSwine: The unwashed but shapely form of languid, delectable Moonbeam was one of the iconic hallmarks of Li'l Abner — an unkempt, impossibly lazy, corncob pipe-smoking, flagrant (and fragrant), raven-haired, earthly (and earthy) woman. Beautiful Moonbeam preferred the company of pigs to suitors — much to the frustration of her equally lazy pappy, Moonshine McSwine. She was usually showcased luxuriating among the hogs, somewhat removed from the main action of the story, in a deliberate parody of glamour magazines and pinup calendars of the day. Capp designed her in caricature of his wife Catherine (minus the dirt), who had also suggested Daisy Mae's name. In one comic it is revealed that she bears a striking resemblance to a wealthy, well-dressed and well-washed woman named Gloria Van Welbuilt, a famous socialite. Despite her lazy nature and dirty appearance she was generally good-natured and kind as shown when she ran off to Dogpatch, carrying two shmoos under her arms to save them from going extinct, wondering if humanity would ever be good enough for them. She also consoled Abner to stop worrying about being a father. Moonbeam also seemed to have interests in romance as in some strips she was seen flirting with and even kissing various male characters, including Abner. She once expressed the desire of having a family of her own and she actually discussed the matter of trapping a husband (if she got cleaned up) with Abner. In one strip it was revealed that Moonbeam was in fact in love with Abner when they were children. In the same strip it was shown that Moonbeam's disposition for filth was born out of a failure to understand the turn-ons of Abner when he was a child. Strangely she actually disliked hogs as a child but after seeing Abner ignoring the openly romantic advances of a clean Daisy Mae, she dived right into a mud-hole headfirst where some hogs were wallowing to earn his love, believing that if Abner didn't like clean girls he must have liked them dirty. Much to her disappointment, however, this, too, failed to capture his attention. Moonbeam was also unknowingly the star of a horror movie directed by Rock Pincus, head film director of a race known as the Pincushions, from planet Pincus 7. Unfortunately this venture ended in tragedy for Rock when he was unknowingly grilled, put into a hot dog bun and devoured while he was still alive.
• Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat: The proud purveyors of "Kickapoo Joy Juice" — a moonshine elixir of such stupefying potency that the fumes alone have been known to melt the rivets off battleships. Concocted in a large wooden vat by the inseparable cave-dwelling buddies Lonesome Polecat (of the "Fried Dog" Indian tribe, later known as the Polecats, "the one tribe who have never been conquered,") and Hairless Joe (a hirsute, club-wielding, modern Cro-Magnon — who frequently made good on his oft-repeated threat, "Ah'll bash yore haid in!") The ingredients of the brew are both mysterious and all-encompassing[14] (much like the contents of their cave, which has been known to harbor prehistoric monsters). When a batch "needs more body," the formidable pair simply goes out and clubs one (often a moose), and tosses it in. Over the years, the "recipe" has called for live grizzly bears, panthers, kerosene, horseshoes and anvils, among other ingredients. An officially licensed soft drink called Kickapoo Joy Juice is still produced by the Monarch Beverage Company of Atlanta, Georgia. Lonesome Polecat was also the official team mascot of the Sioux City Soos (1940–1960),[15] a former Minor League baseball franchise of Sioux City, Iowa.
• Joe Btfsplk: The world's worst jinx, Joe Btfsplk had a perpetually dark rain cloud over his head. Instantaneous bad luck befell anyone unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity. Though well-meaning and friendly, his reputation inevitably precedes him — so Joe is a very lonely little man — so he associates himself with the Scraggs – except in World War II when Joe decided to do his patriotic duty — and associate himself with Hirohito!. He has an apparently unpronounceable name, but creator Al Capp "pronounced" Btfsplk by simply blowing a "raspberry," or Bronx cheer.[16] Joe's personal storm cloud became one of the most iconic images in the strip.
• Senator Jack S. Phogbound: His name was a thinly disguised variant on "jackass," as made plain in his deathless campaign slogan (see Dialogue and catchphrases). The senator was satirist Al Capp's parody of a blustering self-serving Southern politician. Before 1947 Phogbound had been known as Fogbound, but in that year Phogbound "blackmails his fellow Washington senators to appropriate two million dollars to establish Phogbound University," and its attendant brass statue of Phogbound, both reminiscent of self-aggrandizements by Huey Long;[17] the name change allowed Capp to sharpen the joke by calling the university P.U.[18] Phogbound is a corrupt, conspiratorial blowhard; he often wears a coonskin cap and carries an old fashioned flintlock rifle to impress his gullible constituents. In one sequence, Phogbound is unable to campaign in Dogpatch — so he sends his aides with an old, hot air-filled gas bag that resembles him. Nobody noticed the difference!
• Available Jones: Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones was always available — for a price. He had many sidelines, including minding babies (Dry — 5¢, Other kinds — 10¢). He provided anything from a safety pin to a battleship, but his most famous "provision" was his memorable cousin — Stupefyin' Jones.
• Stupefyin' Jones: A walking aphrodisiac, Stupefyin' was stunning — literally. So drop-dead gorgeous that any male who glimpsed her froze petrified in his tracks and rooted to the spot — in a word, stupefied! While she was generally favored by the males of Dogpatch, she could be deadly for a confirmed bachelor to encounter on Sadie Hawkins Day. Statuesque actress Julie Newmar became famous overnight for playing the small role in the 1956 Li'l Abner Broadway musical (and the 1959 film adaptation) without uttering a single line.[19]
• General Bullmoose: Created by Al Capp in June 1953, Bashington T. Bullmoose was the epitome of a mercenary, cold-blooded capitalist tyrant tycoon. Bullmoose's bombastic motto (see Dialogue and catchphrases) was adapted by Capp from a statement made by Charles E. Wilson, the former head of General Motors when it was America's largest corporation. In 1952, Wilson told a Senate subcommittee, "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice-versa." Wilson later served as United States Secretary of Defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.[20] Bullmoose had a simple boyhood dream: to possess all the money in the world. He very nearly did. Bullmoose Industries seemed to own or control everything. He had a milksop of a son named Weakfish, and was sometimes accompanied by his delectable "secretary", Bim Bovak (whose name was a pun on both "bimbo" and bombshell actress Kim Novak). Li'l Abner became embroiled in many globetrotting adventures with the ruthless, reactionary billionaire over the years. Despite his adamantine exterior, General Bullmoose was still capable of a kind of capitalist gallantry. "Those Slobbovians [q.v.] have done me out of a hundred thousand dollars!" he once exclaimed, after falling victim to a fraud. "Nearly an hour's income, bless 'em!"
• Wolf Gal: An irredeemably feral Amazonian beauty who was raised by wolves and preferred to live among them; she lured unwary Dogpatchers to their doom to feed her ravenous pack. Wolf Gal was possibly, and even probably a cannibal — although the point was never stressed since she considered herself an animal, as did the rest of Dogpatch. One of Capp's more popular villains, Wolf Gal was briefly merchandised in the fifties with her own comic book, doll, handpuppet, and even a latex Halloween mask.
• Earthquake McGoon: Billing himself as "the world's dirtiest wrassler," the bearded, bloated McGoon first appeared in Li'l Abner as a traveling exhibition wrestler in the late 1930s, and was reportedly partially based on real-life grappler Man Mountain Dean. He also has a look-alike cousin named Typhoon McGoon. McGoon became increasingly prominent in the Li'l Abner Cream of Wheat print ads of the 1940s, and later, with the early television exposure of gimmicky wrestlers such as Gorgeous George.[21] Earthquake is the nastiest resident of neighboring Skonk Hollow — a nightmarish, notoriously lawless community where no sane Dogpatcher dares set foot. The randy McGoon often attempted to walk Daisy Mae home "Skonk Hollow style" — the lascivious implications of which are never made specific.
• The (shudder!) Scraggs: Hulking, leering, gap-toothed twin miscreants Lem and Luke and their needlessly proud pappy, Romeo. Apelike and gleefully homicidal, the impossibly evil Scraggs were officially declared inhuman by an act of Congress. The Scraggs were so awful, they burned down orphanages just to have light to read by (although the joke was on them when they remembered they couldn't read!) Distant kinfolk of Daisy Mae, they carried on a blood feud with the Yokums throughout the run of the strip - in their first introduction after being run out of a Kentucky county at gunpoint, they tried to kill Li'l Abner but were beaten up by both Abner and Mammy Yokum; Mammy then banished the Scraggs to Skonk Hollow with a dividing line between Skonk Hollow and Dogpatch — with the understanding that although the Scraggs couldn't cross the line, any member of Dogpatch who did cross was prey to the Scraggs! (As happened to Rotten Ralphie.) A long-lost kid sister, named "*@!!*!"-Belle Scragg, briefly joined the clan in 1947. Fetchingly-attired in a prison-striped reform school miniskirt, "*@!!*!"-Belle was outwardly attractive but just as rotten as her siblings on the inside. Her censored first name was an expletive, compelling everyone who addressed her to apologize profusely afterwards.
• Nightmare Alice: Dogpatch's own "conjurin' woman", a hideous, cackling crone who practiced Louisiana Voodoo and black magic. Capp named her after the carnival-themed horror film, Nightmare Alley (1947). She employs witchcraft to "whomp up" ghosts and monsters to do her bidding. She was occasionally assisted by Doctor Babaloo, a witch doctor of the Belgian Congo, as well as her demon-child niece Scary Lou, who specializes in vexing voodoo dolls that resemble Li'l Abner.
• Ole Man Mose: The mysterious Mose was reportedly hundreds of "y'ars" old, and lived like a hermit in a cave atop a mountain. (He obstinately refused to "kick the bucket," which was conveniently positioned just outside his cave door.) His wisdom is absolute ("Ole Man Mose — he knows!"), and his sought-after annual Sadie Hawkins Day predictions — though frustratingly cryptic and infuriatingly misleading — are nonetheless 100% accurate.
• Evil Eye Fleagle: Fleagle has a unique and terrifying skill — the evil eye. An ordinary "whammy", as he called it, could stop a charging bull in its tracks. A "double whammy" could fell a skyscraper, leaving Fleagle exhausted. His dreaded "triple whammy" could melt a battleship — but would practically kill Fleagle in the process.[22] The zoot suit-clad Fleagle was a native of Brooklyn, and his burlesque New York accent was unmistakable — especially when addressing his "goil", the zaftig Shoiley. Fleagle was so popular, licensed plastic replicas of Fleagle's face were produced in the 1950s, to be worn like lapel pins. Battery-operated, the wearer could pull a string and produce a flashing light bulb "whammy". Fleagle was reportedly based on a real-life character, a Runyonesque local boxing trainer and hanger-on named Benjamin "Evil Eye" Finkle. Finkle and his famous "hex" were a ringside fixture in New York boxing circles during the 1930s/40s. Fleagle was vividly portrayed by character actor Al Nesor in the aforementioned stage play and film.
• J. Roaringham Fatback: The self-styled "Pork King" was a greedy, gluttonous, unscrupulous business tycoon. Incensed to find that Dogpatch cast a shadow on his breakfast egg, he had Dogpatch moved — instead of the egg. The bloated, porcine Fatback is, quite literally, a corporate swine.
• Gat Garson: Li'l Abner's doppelgänger — a murderous racketeer, with a predilection for Daisy Mae.
• Aunt Bessie: Mammy's socialite kid sister, the Duchess of Bopshire, was the "white sheep" of the family. Bessie's string of marriages into Boston and Park Avenue aristocracy left her a class-conscious, condescending snob. Her status-seeking crusade to make Abner over and marry him off into high society was doomed to failure, however. Aunt Bessie virtually disappeared from the strip after Abner and Daisy Mae's marriage in 1952, apparently having conceded defeat in her attempt to remake Abner in her own image as a social climber.
• Big Barnsmell: The lonely "inside man" at the "Skonk Works" — a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch. Scores of locals are done in yearly by the toxic fumes of concentrated "skonk oil", which is brewed and barreled daily by Barnsmell and his cousin ("outside man" Barney Barnsmell) by grinding dead skunks and worn shoes into a smoldering still, for some unspecified purpose. His job played havoc with his social life ("He has an air about him," as Dogpatchers tactfully put it), and the name of his famous facility entered the modern lexicon via the Lockheed Skunk Works project.
• Soft-Hearted John: Dogpatch's impossibly mercenary, thoroughly blackhearted grocer, the ironically named Soft-Hearted John gleefully swindled and starved his clientele — and looked disturbingly satanic to boot. He had an idiot of a nephew who sometimes ran the store in his stead, aptly named Soft-Headed John.
• Smilin' Zack: Cadaverous, outwardly peaceable mountaineer with a menacing grin and an even more menacing shotgun. He preferred things "quiet". (Real quiet, that is — not breathing or anything.) Zack's moniker was a take-off on another comic strip, The Adventures of Smilin' Jack by Zack Mosley.
• Dr. Killmare: The local Dogpatch physician, who just happened to be a horse doctor. His name was a pun on the sunny Dr. Kildare of film, radio, and television fame.
• Cap'n Eddie Ricketyback: Decrepit World War I aviator and proprietor/sole operator of the even more decrepit Dogpatch Airlines. Cap'n Eddie's name was a spoof of decorated World War I flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. In 1970, Cap'n Eddie and his firm Trans-Dogpatch Airlines were awarded the West Berlin Route by his old rival Count Felix Von Holenhedt.
• Count Felix Von Holenhedt: German flying ace who in 1970 (age 89) was appointed as West German Civil Aviation Chief. He was never photographed without his World War I spiked helmet on his head. He wore it to cover the hole in his head that had been caused by being shot "clean through th' haid, in a dogfight over Flanders Field in 1918" by Cap'n Eddie Ricketyback. Nonetheless the two old enemies eventually patched things up; Cap'n Ricketyback even persuaded the Count to settle in the States. "Jah!" cried the Count. "I got a cousin in Milvaukee!" Von Holenhedt was also the only person able to properly play the "pfschnlgg". This was a complexly shaped brass instrument, part of whose tubing needed to pass through the player's head.
• Weakeyes Yokum: Before Mister Magoo there was Dogpatch's own Cousin Weakeyes, who would tragically mistake grizzly bears for romantically-inclined "rich gals" in fur coats, and end a sequence by characteristically walking off a cliff.
• Young Eddie McSkonk and U.S. Mule: Ancient, creaky, white-bearded Dogpatch postmaster and his hoary jackass mount. They were usually too feeble to handle the sacks of timeworn, cobweb-covered letters marked "Rush" at the Dogpatch Express Post Office.
• J. Colossal McGenius: The brilliant marketing consultant and "idea man" who charged $10,000 per word for his sought-after business advice. McGenius was given to telling long-winded jokes with forgotten punch lines, however — as well as spells of hiccups and belches which, at ten grand a pop, usually bankrupted his unfortunate clients. (He had a regrettable fondness for gassy soft drinks like "Burpsi-Booma" (a teasing reference to Pepsi-Cola) and "Eleven Urp" (7 Up).) He was aided by his lovely and meticulously efficient secretary, Miss Pennypacker.
• Silent Yokum: Prudent Cousin Silent never utters a word unless it's absolutely, vitally important. Consequently, he hadn't spoken in 40 years. The arrival of Silent's grim visage in Dogpatch signaled earthshaking news on the horizon. Capp would milk reader suspense by having Silent "warm up" his rusty, creaking jaw muscles for a few days, before the momentous pronouncement.
• Happy Vermin: The "world's smartest cartoonist" — a caricature of Ham Fisher — who hired Li'l Abner to draw his comic strip for him in a dimly-lit closet. Instead of using Vermin's tired characters, Abner had inventively peopled the strip with hillbillies. A bighearted Vermin told his slaving assistant: "I'm proud of having created these characters!! They'll make millions for me!! And if they do — I'll get you a new light bulb!!"
• Big Stanislouse; aka Big Julius: Stanislouse was a brutal gangster with a childish fondness for kiddie TV superheroes (like "Chickensouperman" and "Milton the Masked Martian"). Part of a virtual goon squad of comic mobsters that inhabited Li'l Abner and Fearless Fosdick, the oafish Stanislouse alternated with other all-purpose underworld thugs, including "the Boys from the Syndicate" — Capp's euphemism for The Mob.
• The Square-Eyes Family: Mammy's revelatory encounter with these unpopular Dogpatch outcasts first appeared in 1956. The fable-like story was really a thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance. It was later issued as an educational comic book — called Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery! — by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
• Appassionata Von Climax: One of a series of predatory, sexually aggressive sirens who pursued Li'l Abner prior to his marriage, and even afterwards, much to the consternation of Daisy Mae. Joining a long list of dishy femmes fatales and spoiled debutantes that included Gloria Van Welbilt, Moonlight Sonata, Mimi Van Pett and "The Tigress"; Appassionata was memorably portrayed by both Tina Louise (onstage) and Stella Stevens (on film). Capp always wondered how he ever got her suggestive name past the censors.
• Tenderleif Ericson: Discovered frozen in the mud where her Viking ship sank in 1047, Tenderleif was Leif Ericson's beautiful, teenaged kid sister (complete with breastplate armor, Viking helmet and burlesque Norwegian accent). As soon as she saw Li'l Abner, however, she started warming up and breathing hard. "She's seventeen y'ars old," explains Mammy, "and she hain't had a date fo' nine hunnerd y'ars!"
• Princess Minihahaskirt: Decades before Disney's Pocahontas, the sexiest cartoon Indian princesses could be found in Li'l Abner. The latest in a series of lovely native maidens who enticed the normally stoic Lonesome Polecat, the list also included Minnie Mustache, Raving Dove, Little Turkey Wing and Princess Two Feathers.
• Liddle Noodnik: A typically miserable resident of perpetually frozen Lower Slobbovia, naked local waif Liddle Noodnik was usually employed to recite a farcical poem of greeting to visiting dignitaries, or sing the absurd Slobbovian national anthem (see "setting and fictitious locales"). Like many terms in Li'l Abner, Noodnik's name was derived from Yiddish. Nudnik is a slang term for a bothersome person or pest.
• Pantless Perkins: A very late addition to the strip, Capp introduced Honest Abe's brainy, ragamuffin pal Pantless Perkins in a series of kid-themed stories in the seventies, probably to compete with Peanuts. Poor Pantless didn't own a single pair of trousers. He wore an over-length turtleneck sweater to hide the fact — much to his embarrassment. In one storyline {Feb/March 1972}the nearest he ever got a pair of pants was when he helps Honest Abe find a long lost love of a millionaire in return for a pair of pants. Unfortunately the prospective groom drops dead after tasting the terrible cooking of his bride to be — and Pantless remains pantless!
• Rotten Ralphie: The kiddie version of Earthquake McGoon, Ralphie lived up to his name — he was the perfectly rotten Dogpatch neighborhood bully. Exceedingly large for his age, Ralphie always wore a cowboy outfit that was several sizes too small. In one storyline after Ralphie beats up every boy in Dogpatch at the same time, he himself is beaten up when Pantless Perkins and Honest Abe trick Ralphie into getting into a fight with the Scragg boys of Skonk Hollow!
• Marcia Perkins: Innocent, outwardly normal teenager whose lips give off 451 °F of electromagnetic heat, frying the brain of any boy who kisses her. Declared a walking health hazard, poor Marcia must wear a public warning sign ("Do Not Kiss This Girl, by Order of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare"). Her notoriety precedes her everywhere except Dogpatch — where she meets and falls for Tiny Yokum.
• Bet-a-Million Bashby: Bashby amassed his colossal fortune by following one simple rule: Always bet on a sure thing, and always bet with a fool. He hadn't reckoned on fool's luck, however. All through the years Bashby bet on sure things, and all through the years Abner won.
• The Widder Fruitful: Another iconic Dogpatch "regular", often glimpsed in passing or featured in crowd scenes. The ample, fertile widow invariably held three or four naked newborns under each arm, always carried backside forward, with a healthy brood of earlier offspring following in her wake.
• Loverboynik: In 1954, Capp sent a letter to Liberace addressing his intention to spoof him in Li'l Abner as "Liverachy." Liberace had his lawyers threaten to sue. Capp went ahead anyway, with a significant name change. Billed as the "Sweetheart of the Piano," Loverboynik is a blonde "dimpled darling" pianist and TV heartthrob. According to Capp, Liberace was "cut to the quick" when the parody appeared. Capp insisted that Loverboynik was not Liberace because Loverboynik "could play the piano rather decently and rarely wore black lace underwear."[23]
• Rock Hustler: Unscrupulous publicity agent-turned-marketing mogul. He masterminds an ad campaign promoting the miracle diet food "Mockaroni," carefully neglecting to disclose that it's both addictive and lethal. "The more you crave, the more you eat. The more you eat, the thinner you get — until you (shudder!) float away..."
• Dumpington Van Lump: The bloated, almost catatonic heir to the Van Lump fortune, Dumpington can only utter one syllable ("Urp!") ...until he sets sight on Daisy Mae. A somewhat subhuman fiend, his favorite book is the disturbingly-titled "How to Make Lampshades Out of Your Friends." Capp chose the Dumpington sequence to illustrate his lesson on continuity storytelling in the Famous Artists Cartoon Course.
• Sam the Centaur: A "mythical critter" with a classic, chiseled profile and Apollo-like blonde mane, Sam is a Greek centaur who occasionally roams the mountains of Dogpatch instead of the mountains of Thessaly. Available Jones, "th' most book-educated varmint in Dogpatch," pronounces: "He hain't real!"
• Jubilation T. Cornpone: Dogpatch's founder and most famous son, memorialized by a town statue, is Confederate General Jubilation T. Cornpone — renowned for "Cornpone's Retreat," "Cornpone's Disaster," "Cornpone's Stupidity," "Cornpone's Misjudgment," "Cornpone's Hoolmiliation" and "Cornpone's Final Mistake". Cornpone was such a disastrously incompetent military leader that he came to be considered an important asset of the opposing side. According to the stage play, the statue was commissioned by a grateful President Abraham Lincoln! Cornpone's only victories were posthumous — in one storyline, the General's statue is filled with Kickapoo Joy juice, which brings it to "life." It then goes on a rampage, beheading all the statues of Union Army generals. As the U.S. Army can't destroy it — since it's a National Monument — Kickapoo Joy Juice is poured into a Union statue which results in both statues charging one another. When the smoke clears, the animated statues have annihilated each other. At Mammy Yokum's urging the statue pieces are put back together with glue. The hapless general is really best known for being the namesake of the rousing musical number (a "showstopper") in the popular Li'l Abner musical, as sung by Marryin' Sam and chorus.
• Jubilation T. Cornpone Jr: son of General Cornpone; formerly "commanded" army mules; became Commander of all U.N. Forces against Invaders from Outer Space — despite being described as the most incompetent general of all time — he was given the job because no other General would take it! {Feb 1959}; fell in love with big eyes "Princess Pocahauntingeyes" and lived with her in the land above the Dogpatch via the "Trashbean stalk"; henpecked Cornpone admits to Honest Abe however that all is not bliss — his "Big eyed" wife eyes have got smaller and her mouth is bigger! {Nov 20, 1971}
• Romeo McHaystack: A would be Don Juan of Pineapple Junction whose attempts at romancing women are frustrated because the Civic Improvement League tattooed a warning about him on his forehead. Discouraged, he suddenly decides to romance Dogpatch women when he discovers that because atomic waste is suspended above Dogpatch, Dogpatch is permanently in darkness![24] (The waste was dropped on Dogpatch because it was thought nobody lived there since no income taxes had been filed there since 1776!)
• Sadie Hawkins: In the early days of Dogpatch, Sadie Hawkins was "the homeliest gal in them hills" who grew frantic waiting for suitors to come a-courtin'. Her father Hekzebiah Hawkins, a prominent Dogpatch resident, grew even more frantic — about Sadie living at home for the rest of his life. So he decreed the first annual Sadie Hawkins Day, a foot race in which all the unmarried women pursued the town's bachelors, with matrimony as the consequence.[25] A pseudo-holiday entirely created in the strip, it's still frequently observed today in the form of Sadie Hawkins dances, to which it is customary for women to ask men and at which women approach (or chase after) men.
• Lena the Hyena: A hideous Lower Slobbovian gal, referred to but initially unseen or only glimpsed from the neck down in Li'l Abner. Lena was so ugly that anyone who saw her was immediately driven mad. No sane person, therefore, could tell you what she looked like. After weeks of teasing his readers by hiding Lena's face behind "censored" stickers and strategically placed dialogue balloons, Capp invited fans to draw Lena in a famous nationwide contest in 1946. Lena was ultimately revealed in the harrowing winning entry (as judged by Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff and Salvador Dalí) drawn by noted cartoonist Basil Wolverton.
• Joanie Phoanie: An unabashed Communist radical and agitator, who sang revolutionary songs of class warfare (with burlesque titles like "Molotov Cocktails for Two") — while hypocritically traveling via limousine and charging outrageous concert appearance fees to impoverished orphans. Joanie was Capp's notorious parody of protest singer/songwriter Joan Baez. The character caused a storm of controversy in 1966, and many newspapers would only run censored versions of the strips. Baez took Capp's implicit satire to heart, however, as she would admit years later in her autobiography: "Mr Capp confused me considerably. I'm sorry he's not alive to read this, it would make him chuckle" (from And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir, 1987).
• S.W.I.N.E.: Capp used Li'l Abner to satirize current events, fads, and ephemeral popular culture (such as zoot suits in "Zoot Suit Yokum," 1943). Beginning in the mid-1960s, the strip became a forum for Capp's increasingly conservative political views. Capp, who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a stone's throw from Harvard, satirized campus radicals, militant student political groups and hippies during the Vietnam War protest era. The Youth International Party (YIP) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in Li'l Abner as S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!)
• Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in Li'l Abner names that would render all further description unnecessary. In that spirit, the following list of recurring semi-regulars (and a few one-shots) are unreferenced: Tobacco Rhoda, Joan L. Sullivan, Romeo McHaystack, Hamfat Gooch, Global McBlimp, Concertino Constipato, Jinx Rasputinburg, J. Sweetbody Goodpants, Reactionary J. Repugnant, B. Fowler McNest, Fleabrain, Stubborn P. Tolliver, Idiot J. Tolliver, Battling McNoodnik, Mayor Dan'l Dawgmeat, Slobberlips McJab, One-Fault Jones, Swami Riva, Olman Riva, Sir Orble Gasse-Payne, Black Rufe, Mickey Looney, "Ironpants" Bailey, Henry Cabbage Cod, Flash Boredom, Priceless and Liceless, Hopeless and Soapless, Disgustin' Jones, Skelton McCloset, Hawg McCall, "Good old" Bedly Damp, and a host of others.

Li'l Abner also featured a comic strip-within-the-strip: Fearless Fosdick was a parody of Chester Gould's plainclothes detective, Dick Tracy. It first appeared in 1942, and proved so popular that it ran intermittently in Li'l Abner over the next 35 years. Gould was also personally parodied in the series as cartoonist Lester Gooch — the diminutive, much-harassed and occasionally deranged "creator" of Fearless Fosdick. The style of the Fosdick sequences closely mimicked Tracy, including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping mortality rate, the crosshatched shadows, the lettering style — even Gould's familiar signature was parodied in Fearless Fosdick. Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). The razor-jawed title character (Li'l Abner's "ideel") was perpetually ventilated by flying bullets until he resembled a slice of Swiss cheese.[26] The impervious Fosdick considered the gaping, smoking holes "mere scratches," however, and always reported back in one piece to his corrupt superior "The Chief" for duty the next day.

Besides being fearless, Fosdick was "pure, underpaid and purposeful," according to his creator. He also had notoriously bad aim — often leaving a trail of collateral damage (in the form of bullet-riddled pedestrians) in his wake. "When Fosdick is after a lawbreaker, there is no escape for the miscreant," Capp wrote in 1956. "There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood — but only a fighting chance. Fosdick's duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime, and it's too much to ask any law-enforcement officer to do both, I suppose." Fosdick lived in squalor at the dilapidated boarding house run by his mercenary landlady, Mrs. Flintnose. He never married his own long-suffering fiancée Prudence (ugh!) Pimpleton (they've been engaged for 17 years), but Fosdick was directly responsible for the unwitting marriage of his biggest fan, Li'l Abner, to Daisy Mae in 1952. The bumbling detective became the star of his own NBC-TV puppet show that same year. Fosdick also achieved considerable exposure as the long-running advertising spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the postwar period.

Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. Most Dogpatchers were shiftless and ignorant; the remainder were scoundrels and thieves. The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them (see Sadie Hawkins Day). Those who farmed their turnip fields watched "turnip termites" swarm by the billions every year, locust-like, to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock and all their clothing).

The local geography was fluid and vividly complex; Capp continually changed it to suit either his whims or the current storyline. Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff). Local attractions that reappeared in the strip included the West Po'k Chop Railroad; the "Skonk Works", a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch; and the General Jubilation T. Cornpone memorial statue.

In one storyline Dogpatch's "Cannonball Express" train, after 1,563 tries, finally delivers its "cargo" to Dogpatch citizens — on Oct 12, 1946! Receiving a 13-year stack of newspapers, Li'l Abner's family realizes that the Great Depression is on and that banks should close; they race to take their money out of the bank — before realizing they have no money in the bank! Other news is the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt) and a picture of Germany's "new leader" Adolf Hitler who claims to love peace while reviewing 20,000 new planes (April 21, 1933); Mammy doesn't trust Hitler but Li'l Abner and Pappy think Hitler is a fine feller — since Senator Fogbound (Phogbound) says so!

In the midst of the Great Depression, the hardscrabble residents of lowly Dogpatch allowed suffering Americans to laugh at yokels even worse off than themselves.[27] In Al Capp's own words, Dogpatch was "an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere." Early in the continuity Capp a few times referred to Dogpatch being in Kentucky, but he was careful afterwards to keep its location generic, probably to avoid cancellations from offended Kentucky newspapers. From then on, he referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location as to exactly where it was supposed to be located. Humorously enough, many states tried to claim ownership to the little town (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc.), yet Capp would not budge. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. Like the Coconino County depicted in George Herriman's Krazy Kat and the Okefenokee Swamp of Walt Kelly's Pogo, and, most recently and famously, The Simpsons' "Springfield", Dogpatch's distinctive cartoon landscape became as identified with the strip as any of its characters. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2 km²) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas.

As utterly wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse. Frigid, faraway Lower Slobbovia was fashioned as a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy, and remains a contemporary reference.[28] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose.[29] The favorite dish of the starving natives was raw polar bear (and vice versa). Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor.

Lower Slobbovia and Dogpatch are both comic examples of modern dystopian satire. Conceptually based on Siberia, or perhaps specifically on Birobidzhan, Capp's icy hellhole made its first appearance in Li'l Abner in April 1946. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. Their monetary unit was the "rasbucknik," of which one was worth nothing and a large quantity was worth a lot less, due to the trouble of carrying them around. The local children were read harrowing tales from "Ice-sop's Fables," which were parodies of classic Aesop Fables, but with a darkly sardonic bent (and titles like "Coldilocks and the Three Bares").

Other fictional locales included Skonk Hollow, El Passionato, Kigmyland, the Republic of Crumbumbo, Lo Kunning, Faminostan, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, Pineapple Junction and, most notably, the Valley of the Shmoon.

An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. It made its debut in Li'l Abner on November 15, 1937. Capp originally created it as a comic plot device, but in 1939, only two years after its inauguration, a double-page spread in Life proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges." By the early 1940s the comic strip event had swept the nation's imagination and acquired a life of its own. By 1952, the event was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 known venues. It became a woman-empowering rite at high schools and college campuses, long before the modern feminist movement gained prominence.

Outside the comic strip, the practical basis of a Sadie Hawkins dance is simply one of gender role-reversal. Women and girls take the initiative in inviting the man or boy of their choice out on a date — almost unheard of before 1937 — typically to a dance attended by other bachelors and their assertive dates. When Capp created the event, it wasn't his intention to have it occur annually on a specific date, because it inhibited his freewheeling plotting. However, due to its enormous popularity and the numerous fan letters he received, Capp made it a tradition in the strip every November, lasting four decades. In many localities the tradition continues.

Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Others include double whammy, skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. The term shmoo has also entered the lexicon — used in defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than four separate fields of science.[48]

• In socioeconomics, a "shmoo" refers to any generic kind of good that reproduces itself (as opposed to "widgets" which require resources and active production).
• In microbiology, "shmooing" is the biological term used for the "budding" process in yeast reproduction. The cellular bulge produced by a haploid yeast cell towards a cell of the opposite mating type during the mating of yeast is referred to as a "shmoo," due to its structural resemblance to the cartoon character.
• In the field of particle physics, "shmoo" refers to a high energy survey instrument – as utilized at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Cygnus X-3 Sky Survey performed at the LAMPF (Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility) grounds. Over one hundred white "shmoo" detectors were at one time sprinkled around the accelerator beamstop area and adjacent mesa to capture subatomic cosmic ray particles emitted from the Cygnus constellation. The detectors housed scintillators and photomultipliers in an array that gave the detector its distinctive shmoo shape.
• In electrical engineering, a shmoo plot is the technical term used for the graphic pattern of test circuits. (The term is also used as a verb: to "shmoo" means to run the test.)

Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly," schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. (In his book The American Language, H.L. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning — not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier — in the pages of Li'l Abner.)

In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. "Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. When the starving and broke Capp first sold Li'l Abner in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[49]

In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at UFS. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!!," was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over Superman (see above excerpt). It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953).

In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.[50]

Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. In 1949, when the all-male club refused membership to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena, Capp temporarily resigned in protest. "Capp had always advocated a more activist agenda for the Society, and he had begun in December 1949 to make his case in the Newsletter as well as at the meetings," wrote comics historian R. C. Harvey.[51] According to Tom Roberts, author of Alex Raymond: His Life and Art (2007), Capp authored a stirring monologue that was instrumental in changing the restrictive rules the following year. Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist to break the gender barrier when the NCS finally permitted female members in 1950.

Through Li'l Abner, the American comic strip achieved unprecedented relevance in the postwar years, attracting new readers who were more intellectual, more informed on current events, and less likely to read the comics (according to Coulton Waugh, author of The Comics, 1947). "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li'l Abner," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989). With adult readers far outnumbering juveniles, Li'l Abner forever cleared away the concept that humor strips were solely the domain of adolescents and children. Li'l Abner provided a whole new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for Pogo, Feiffer, Doonesbury and MAD.

Fearless Fosdick and other Li'l Abner comic strip parodies, such as "Jack Jawbreaker!" (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were almost certainly an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created his irreverent Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same subversive manner. By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. Similarities between Li'l Abner and the early Mad include the incongruous use of mock-Yiddish slang terms, the nose-thumbing disdain for pop culture icons, the rampant black humor, the dearth of sentiment and the broad visual styling. Even the trademark comic "signs" that clutter the backgrounds of Will Elder's panels had a precedent in Li'l Abner, in the residence of Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones, though they're also reminiscent of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence.

Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad Magazine. Just look at Fearless Fosdick — a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. Then look at Mad's "Teddy and the Pirates," "Superduperman!" or even Little Annie Fanny. Forget about it — slam dunk! Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included. Capp was a genius. You wanna argue about it? I'll fight ya, and I'll win!

— Ralph Bakshi at ASIFA-Hollywood, April 2008

Al Capp once told one of his assistants that he knew Li'l Abner had finally "arrived" when it was first pirated as a pornographic Tijuana bible parody in the mid-1930s.[52] Li'l Abner was also parodied in 1954 (as "Li'l Melvin" by "Ol' Hatt") in the pages of EC Comics' humor comic, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein.[53] Kurtzman eventually did spoof Li'l Abner (as "Li'l Ab'r") in 1957, in his short-lived humor magazine, Trump. Both the Trump and Panic parodies were drawn by EC legend, Will Elder. In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp," creator of "Li'l Adam." Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip Mary Worth by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in Li'l Abner (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however — cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt.

Li'l Abner's success also sparked a handful of comic strip imitators. Jasper Jooks by Jess "Baldy" Benton (1948–'49), Ozark Ike (1945–'53) and Cotton Woods (1955–'58), both by Ray Gotto, were clearly inspired by Capp's strip. Boody Rogers' Babe was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks — with many similarities to Li'l Abner. A derivative hillbilly feature called Looie Lazybones, an out-and-out imitation (drawn by a young Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's Thrilling Comics in the late 1940s. Charlton published the short-lived Hillbilly Comics by Art Gates in 1955, featuring "Gumbo Galahad," who was a dead ringer for Li'l Abner, as was Pokey Oakey by Don Dean, which ran in MLJ's Top-Notch Laugh and Pep Comics. Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview.

With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939 to December 6, 1940. Rounding out the cast were soap opera star Laurette Fillbrandt as Daisy Mae, Hazel Dopheide as Mammy Yokum, and Clarence Hartzell (who was also a prominent actor on Vic and Sade) as Pappy. Durward Kirby was the announcer. The radio show was not written by Al Capp — but by Charles Gussman. However, Gussman consulted closely with Capp on the storylines. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. He also briefly filled-in for radio journalist Drew Pearson, participated in a March 2, 1948 America's Town Meeting of the Air debate on ABC, and hosted his own syndicated, 500-station radio show.)

• The Shmoo Sings with Earl Rogers — 78 rpm (1948) Allegro
• The Shmoo Club b/w The Shmoo Is Clean, the Shmoo Is Neat — 45 rpm (1949) Music You Enjoy, Inc.
• The Snuggable, Huggable Shmoo b/w The Shmoo Doesn't Cost a Cent — 45 rpm (1949) Music You Enjoy, Inc.
• Shmoo Lesson b/w A Shmoo Can Do Most Anything — 45 rpm (1949) Music You Enjoy, Inc.
• Li'l Abner Goes to Town — 78 rpm (1950) Capp-Tone Comic Record
• Li'l Abner (Original Cast Recording) — LP (1956) Columbia
• Li'l Abner (Motion Picture Soundtrack) — LP (1959) Columbia
• An Interview with Al Capp — EP (1959) Smithsonian Folkways
• Li'l Abner fo' Chillun — LP (c. 1960) 20th FOX
• Al Capp on Campus — LP (1969) Jubilee

Selections from the Li'l Abner musical score have been recorded by everyone from Percy Faith and Mario Lanza to André Previn and Shelly Manne. Over the years, Li'l Abner characters have inspired diverse compositions in pop, jazz, country and even rock 'n' roll:

• The Kickapoo Joy Juice Jolt (1946) from The Li'l Abner Suite, was composed for The Alvino Rey Orchestra by Bud Estes.
• Kickapoo Joy Juice, composed by Duke Ellington, was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in December, 1947.
• Lonesome Polecat, written by Johnny Mercer & Gene de Paul for the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), was later recorded by Bobby Darin and the McGuire Sisters.
• Fearless Fosdick, composed by Bill Holman, was recorded live in 1954 by Vic Lewis and his Orchestra, featuring Tubby Hayes.
• Daisy Mae, written and recorded by Ernest Tubb, appeared on the Decca album The Daddy of 'Em All (1957).
• Kickapoo Joy Juice (1962) written by Jack Greenback, Mel Larson & Jerry Marcellino, was recorded by The Rivingtons.
• Sadie Hawkins Dance (2001) written by Matt Thiessen, was recorded by Relient K.
• Fearless Fosdick's Tune, composed and recorded by Umberto Fiorentino, appeared on the Brave Art/Columbia-Sony CD Things to Come (2002).

• Li'l Abner — by Ben Oakland, Milton Berle & Milton Drake (1940) Leo Feist Publishers
• Sadie Hawkins Day — by Don Raye & Hughie Prince (1940) Leeds Music Corp.
• The USA by Day and the RAF by Night — by Hal Block & Bob Musel (1944) Paramount Music Corp.
• (Li'l Abner) Don't Marry That Girl!! — by Al Capp & Sam H. Stept (1946) Barton Music Corp.
• The Shmoo Song — by John Jacob Loeb & Jule Styne (1948) Harvey Music Corp.
• Shmoo Songs — by Gerald Marks (1949) Bristol Music Corp.
• The Kigmy Song — by Joe Rosenfield & Fay Tishman (1949) Town and Country Music Co.
• I'm Lonesome and Disgusted!!! — by "Irving Vermyn" [Al Capp, Bob Lubbers & Dave Lambert] (1956) General Music Publishing Co.
• Namely You — by Johnny Mercer & Gene de Paul (1956) Commander Publications
• Love in a Home — by Johnny Mercer & Gene de Paul (1956) Commander Publications
• If I Had My Druthers — by Johnny Mercer & Gene de Paul (1956) Commander Publications
• Jubilation T. Cornpone — by Johnny Mercer & Gene de Paul (1956) Commander Publications

• Tip Top Comics (1936–1948) anthology (United Feature Syndicate)
• Comics on Parade (1945–1946) anthology (UFS)
• Sparkler Comics (1946–1948) anthology (UFS)
• Li'l Abner (1947) 9 issues (Harvey Comics)
• Li'l Abner (1948) 3 issues (Super Publishing)
• Tip Topper Comics (1949–1954) anthology (UFS)
• Al Capp's Li'l Abner (1949–1955) 28 issues (Toby)[57]
• Al Capp's Shmoo Comics (1949–1950) 5 issues (Toby)
• Al Capp's Dogpatch (1949) 4 issues (Toby)
• Al Capp's Li'l Abner in The Mystery o' the Cave (1950) (Oxydol premium)
• Al Capp's Daisy Mae in Ham Sangwidges (1950) (Oxydol premium)
• Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels (1950) (Oxydol premium)
• Al Capp's Wolf Gal (1951–1952) 2 issues (Toby)
• Washable Jones and the Shmoo (1953) (Toby)
• Party Time with Coke (1958) monthly digest featuring Al Capp's Boys 'n' Gals (Coca-Cola premium)

No comprehensive reprint of the series had been attempted until Kitchen Sink Press began publishing the Li'l Abner Dailies in hardcover and paperback, one year per volume, in 1988. The demise of KSP in 1999 stopped the reprint series at Volume 27 (1961). More recently, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the limited series Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, in four full-color volumes covering the Sunday pages from 1954 to 1961. They also released an archive hardcover reprint of the complete Shmoo Comics in 2009, followed by a second Shmoo volume of compete newspaper strips in 2011.

At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW and The Library of American Comics announced the upcoming publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays: Vol. 1 (1934–1936). The comprehensive series titled Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, is planned to be a reprinting of the complete 43-year history of Li'l Abner[58] spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010.

Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades.[59] The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for various public services:

• Al Capp by Li'l Abner — public service giveaway issued by the Red Cross (1946)
• Yo' Bets Yo' Life! — public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Army (circa 1950)
• Li'l Abner Joins the Navy — public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of the Navy (1950)
• Fearless Fosdick and the Case of the Red Feather — public service giveaway issued by Red Feather Services, a forerunner of United Way (1951)
• The Youth You Supervise — public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (1956)
• Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery! — public service giveaway issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (1956)
• Operation: Survival! — public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of Civil Defense (1957)
• Natural Disasters! — public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of Civil Defense (1957)
• Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story — public service giveaway issued by The Fellowship of Reconciliation (1958)[60]
• Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space — public service giveaway issued by the Job Corps (1965)

In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the U.S. Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, Christmas Seals, the National Amputation Foundation and Disabled American Veterans,[61] among others.

Beginning in 1944, Li'l Abner was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham and Howard Swift. The five titles were: Amoozin But Confoozin, Sadie Hawkins Day, A Peekoolyar Sitcheeyshun, Porkulia Piggy and Kickapoo Juice. Al Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts.[62]

Evil-Eye Fleegle and his "whammy" make an animated cameo appearance in the U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project training film, Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack (1950). Lena the Hyena makes a brief animated appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

In 1952, Fearless Fosdick proved popular enough to be incorporated into a short-lived TV series. The ambitious puppet show was created and directed by puppeteer Mary Chase, written by Everett Crosby and voiced by John Griggs, Gilbert Mack and Jean Carson. Fearless Fosdick premiered on Sunday afternoons on NBC; 13 episodes featuring the Mary Chase marionettes were produced.[63] The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto," "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney," "Frank N. Stein," "Batula," "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole," "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man."

Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. The idea was reportedly abandoned in the development stage by the producers, however, for reasons of practicality. After Capp's death, the Shmoo was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series for TV. First in the 1979 The New Shmoo (later incorporated into Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo), and again from 1980 to 1981 in the Flintstone Comedy Show, in the Bedrock Cops segments.

The first Li'l Abner movie was made at RKO Radio Pictures in 1940, starring Jeff York (credited as Granville Owen), Martha O'Driscoll, Mona Ray and Johnnie Morris. Although it lacks the political satire and Broadway polish of the 1959 version, this film gives a fairly accurate portrayal of the various Dogpatch characters up until that time.[64] Of particular note is the appearance of Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat, and a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle. Other familiar silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, and ex-Keystone Cops Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Al St. John. The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape (natcherly!)

A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956 and had a long run of 693 performances,[65] followed by a nationwide tour. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle.[66][67] Starring Peter Palmer, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens, Stubby Kaye, Billie Hayes, Howard St. John, Joe E. Marks, Carmen Alvarez, William Lanteau and Bern Hoffman, with cameos by Jerry Lewis, Robert Strauss, Ted Thurston, Alan Carney, Valerie Harper and Donna Douglas. Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. The musical has since become a perennial favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements.

Li'l Abner never sold as a TV series despite several attempts (including an unsold pilot that aired once on NBC on September 5, 1967),[68] but Al Capp was a familiar face on television for twenty years. No other cartoonist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? 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. He hosted at least five television programs between 1952 and 1972 — three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk," with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. In addition, Capp was a frequent celebrity guest. His appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.

Animation

• Kickapoo Juice (1944) Columbia
• Amoozin' but Confoozin' (1944) Columbia
• A Pee-kool-yar Sit-chee-ay-shun (1944) Columbia
• Porkuliar Piggy (1944) Columbia
• Sadie Hawkins Day (1944) Columbia

'TV Animation

• The New Shmoo 1980 (Hanna-Barbera)

Live-action

• Li'l Abner (1940) RKO Radio Pictures
• Fearless Fosdick (1952) NBC (series) 13 episodes
• Li'l Abner (1959) Paramount
• Li'l Abner (5 September 1967) NBC (unsold television pilot with Sammy Jackson and Judy Canova)
• Li'l Abner (26 April 1971) ABC (TV special)
• Li'l Abner in Dogpatch Today (9 November 1978) NBC (TV special)