“Chickensouperman” from L’il Abner

Creator of the iconic comic strip Li’l Abner, Al Capp was one of the most accomplished American cartoonists of the twentieth century. Capp was born Alfred Gerald Caplin in New Haven, Connecticut. After working as a cartoonist for Associated Press, in 1934 Capp published the first strip of Li’l Abner through the United Features Syndicate; the comic subsequently ran for a remarkable forty-three years, appearing in more than one thousand newspapers in the United States and internationally. Often satirical and parodic, the subversive politics of Capp’s early comics were later complicated by public controversy, entrenching Capp in the popular imagination as a provocative and influential contributor to American visual culture.