Yo Jeff, I've got a back issue of The Baffler (or maybe its an anthology, I can't remember) with a long essay on Capp's politics. Despite his mad cartooning skills, I remember it made a pretty good case that Capp was a ring-wing nutcase his whole life. I'll bring it in to work for you...

Excellent, thanks!

Revisionist nonsense. Check out what Isaac Asimov had to say about Al Capp in I.Asimov. He was good friends with Asimov at one time; they attended rallies for LBJ together in 1964; Asimov certainly considered Capp a liberal.

Things degraded to the point where Asimov ultimately felt compelled to publicly denounce Capp's blatant racism. Asimov wasn't a fan of the 60's counterculture set himself, but he thought Capp's carictures, especially calling out the ones of Joan Baez and blacks in general, were vicious and uncalled for.

I was a big fan. His downfall came as a result of being accused of child molestation. Don't know if it was true but it really hurt his popularity.

I agree, a lot of Capp's targets were deserving. But his well-documented exchange with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their "bed-in" was disgusting...his attacks on her were vicious and personal, in no way appropriate to the occasion however ludicrous it may have been. It's one thing to deflate counterculture icons; his spitting hatred of two goofy peaceniks was something else entirely.

FWIW, the woman caricatured on the Bulzcht page looks a whole lot like Bella Abzug, famously liberal member of the House of Representatives beginning in 1971 and contestant for various Senate and NYC mayoral elections. She was very well-known for her big hats.

Al Capp was a jerk, and a loser, and his work was rubbish, thats why no one collects it now.

There's no doubt that Capp was hugely talented. Right-wing? Sure--he shows up in the John Lennon documentary, Imagine, trying to take the piss out of John and Yoko during (and for) the bed-in. He failed, but I'm slightly sympathetic to the notion that Lennon occasionally could have deserved having the piss taken out of him. His distaste for dirty hippies, and leering at hippie chicks, are typical for men of his generation and that era.

But the fourth cartoon from the bottom is a rape joke. When were those ever funny?

These illustrations, although a bit dated, are great!!
It doesn't take a stretch of the mind to apply some of 60's-70's-period Capps' counter-counter culture observations to modern pc ridiculousness.
Left, Right, whatever - Capp should be applauded for poking fun at any type of elitist "untouchable" group, and being capable of empathizing with a variety of underdogs. Sometimes a good bs-calling smarts.
Mucho props for posting these!...

You must be pretty young or just plain dumb to think Capp was a "decent fellow", just trying to expose hypocrisy wherever he found it- he only ever found it on the left-in the proponents of civil rights and in the opponents of the tragic Vietnam War. True, his cartooning was good, but I think it is an insult to speak of him in the same breath as the great Walt Kelly. You also insult Baez and Dylan, whose artistic and political contributions far excede Capp's, who contributed mainly bile, not truth, to a difficult period in our country's history. Those of us who were there at the time also remember that his visits to campuses, although given the V.I.P. "hush-hush" treatment, were attended by many ugly tales of lechery, improper and even perverse behavior on the part of this "decent fellow". Read Andrew's book. Capp, for all his talent, was a CREEP!

Saw a biography the other day on Frank Frazetta.
You know him, he's the guy that re-did all the covers for the Edgar Rice Burroughs books (Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian).
He was with Al from 1952 to 1961 and is credited with a huge amount of work for Lil Abner...
The style appears to be Capps, but the quality was definately Frazetta.

Look again. Artistic quality notwithstanding, several of the illos you reproduced are remarkably mean-spirited and hostile.
Capp's parodies always were razor-edged ("Mary Worthless, Lovable Old Busybody"), but he really did lose it in "The Sixties."

Documentary proof of Capp's crusade against trust-fund hippies is to be found in the lp: Al Capp On Campus. Keep an eye on eBay for it!

I met Al Capp at a news conference in St.Louis in 1969.
He was very provocative, but seemed to enjoy life a great deal.
At that time he was solidly conservative, and enjoyed goading liberals in the audience.
No matter what your politics are, the fact remains that Al Capp was bigger than life figure, and a very talented man.

"Capp was merely doing what he had always done, deflating the fatheads and phonies.."

No, he went from being a brilliant artist who caricatured the powerful to a loathsome hater of the not-powerful. He made a later career of appearing on talk shows and insulting women, "hippies," liberals, etc. (Not that different from the trajectory of Mort Sahl, but with much more venom.)

I've always loved him as an artist, but I came to despise him as the miserable curmudgeonly bastard he became.

Capp had a good crew working for him and that helped his reputation as an artist, but he was mostly an organizer and writer, IMHO - for a while, for instance, Frank Frazetta would draw the voluptuous female bodies, and Capp would add the heads - but my favorite stunt of his was his feud with "Mary Worth" and her creator, Allen Saunders. Capp had a real flair for capturing the spirit of "Mary Worm", his hilariously vicious lampoon of Worth, and Saunders was pissed of enough to strike back with a drunken cartoonist character named "Hal Rapp", until the Syndicate told 'em to knock it off. Fearless Fosdick was my real reason to read his stuff, anyway.

Thanks for all the comments.

I wonder if Capp had a lightning-rod instead of a wooden leg? Thirty years after his death and people still go apeshit at the mere mention of his name.

A few replies:

-Regarding Capp's alleged child-molesting -- this is the first I've heard of such an incident. A thorough internet search yielded no evidence at all (other than rumors, of course) of the supposed crime. Certainly he was accused - repeatedly, apparently - of unwanted sexual advances at various colleges, but was he a pedophile? Provide some proof.

-As for Dylan, Lennon, Baez: They - as artists or human beings - simply don't interest me as much as Capp, whose work was just as humane, "decent" or "truthful" a contribution as any of theirs -- especially considering the ridiculous, unquestioned "icon" status they each enjoy. What is Dylan contributing with his Victoria's Secret ads? What did Lennon encourage by his "bed-ins" other than the increased slothfulness of his slavish followers? And Baez -- who cares? I can name a dozen lesser-known "folkies" of her era whose work is more interesting, challenging and personal than hers.

-And the "rape joke" -- who says it's meant to be funny? It's not a single-panel gag cartoon; it's a one-page illo removed from the context of its chapter in a larger book. Admittedly, it would require a pretty skewed framework to allow for any but an offensive reading of that page. Still -- rape jokes are one thing, rape itself is quite another.

-As far as I know, Frazetta stopped working with Capp in 1961. This book appears to have been published in 1971, which rules out his participation in the creation of the drawings. I'm sure Capp had countless assistants over the years...

After Frazetta, the best-known Capp assistant was MAD's Jack Rickard, who drew so much of the later strips (Capp continued the practice of drawing at least the faces of the principals) that it's hard to untangle his style from Capp's. These drawings look like they could be the same sort of thing.

Capp's later bitterness still doesn't take away his earlier genius, for me. By the time I came along, he was into his 60s phase. The stories generally ran a week or two, and his epic days were behind him, but I still thought it was good stuff. Now I've been spoiled by the reprints. Before those were available, I used to go to the library and read my home town paper in microfilm, following three or four strips from day to day. I'd have to quit when I got 'carsick' from zooming ahead to the next day.

Surprised no one pointed out probably the greatest smackdown in the history of television: Frank Zappa and Al Capp were on (I believe) Cavett's show. Capp had a prosthetic leg at the time. Capp taunted Zappa by saying "You have long hair, does that make you a girl?"
Zappa replied: "You have a wooden leg - does that make you a table?"

Capp had a strange career. His greatest work was probably the Legend of the Shmoo, printed right after WWII, which asked why there wasn't prosperity for all. His answer: greed and other human failings. But if bitterness and anger drove his satire, well, Capp was no different from most great satirists. Unfortunately, in the 60s, he wasn't content to ply his art and became a public figure -- the road to Hell for many an artist. A few comments on the comments: the sex crime wasn't pedophilia. Capp was charged with forcing legal sodomy (a BJ) on a young woman. It was a set-up, something that must have made him even more bitter about humanity. The incident ended his public appearances.; Capp was a superb artist, though he depended on assistants later in his career, this being the normal course for cartoonists of his day. Frazetta worked some on Li'l Abner but mostly on Long Sam, a Capp-written strip about a baseball player. Capp himself worked as assistant to Ham Fisher (Joe Palooka). After Capp wrote a satirical humor piece about the ordeal of working for the man, Fisher went nuts and accused Capp of drawing obscene comics. Fisher actually pasted together "examples" of these comics which were introduced as evidence in court. They were easilly revealed to be fakes and, after Capp was exonerated and Fisher humiliated, Fisher killed himself. Sometimes I think that Capp was like the character that he created who always had a black cloud over his head so that bad luck followed him and he was always miserable wherever he went.; In Imagine, when Capp meets Lennon, it isn't only Capp's anger but also John's, that is evident. Capp's compulsion to confront Lennon shows the self-destructiveness of such anger.

Yeah, it's always a good idea to squelch the art of the past because it might be considered offensive or racist or sexist today... we should be sure and burn all the history books while we are at it.

Art is art of its own accord; it is not inextricably tied to some political movement or time. Why are you complainers so scared to look our past sqaure in the eye? And, Mr Parrish, while our beloved blogger may not have lived during the time of these cartoons, I guess it takes that darn "youth" to be brave enough to acknowledge the realities in *your* past And honestly, he's not that young and definitely not dumb either, just read his blog.

Jeff, I definitely agree-there are MANY more important "icons" than Dylan, Lennon, and Baez. Music industry icons like those three were raking in the dough during the 60s, all while esposing the "poverty is cool" ideal. Old knee-jerk-liberal hippies who can't get over their flower power teen years just need to get a clue. It was one more marketed "movement" that was making someone lots of money off of bored middle class kids who wanted to annoy their parents. No different than the music culture that tagged along with the "Gangsta'" uprising, no different than tattoos and piercings of today. To me, the "little guys" in the civil rights movement made the real sacrifice--those people had something to lose when they raised their voices together (not just the keys to mommy's volzwagen bug). And even that movement was bastardized by marketing eventually...

Thanks for posting such a provocative bunch of images! Keep up the great work

He was the people's cartoonist (i.e. a populist, not a communist).

In the 60's, the vast, vast majority of the public found hippies to be the antithesis of human civility, rather than the saviors of humanity they claimed to be. They were seen as regressive, naive, worthless terrorists by nearly everyone over 30.

(It seems to me that there are a lot more ex-hippies these days then there were hippies in the first place.)

i once heard that al capp used to ride around in a hot ait baloon and he would hang a giant meat hook from a rope down and grab small animals with it as he passed over the country side

because of this habbit i could never enjoy his artwork

seriously though, who cares who he put down in his art, as far as i can tell it was his job to be a douche bag, in retrospect all people in history were douchebags, especialy damn dirty hippes

The problem with Internet posting is that it validates the opinions of uninformed people across the board. Capp was never once accused of "child molestation". Nor was he a racist. (Even a smattering of Li'l Abner - the famous "square eyes" story, for instance - reveals Capp as a champion of the downtrodden and "different".) He made a living for decades doing the grossest, most hilarious cartoon caricatures of white hillbillies. How anyone can accuse him of singling out Blacks is absurd. These accusations are a matter of pure and simple ignorance. If you want the facts, they are available online for all to read. Please educate yourselves before you post.

Petruk, who contributed the Frank Zappa story, is misinformed.

In reality, the exchange he cites occurred between Zappa and a '60's right wing talk show host named Joe Pine, [look it up] who lost a leg in WWII. The exchange did not appear on The Dick Cavett Show, and had nothing to do with Al Capp.

Moreover, piltdownman appears to be an imbecile.

I am awed by the drawing power. Frank Frazetta drew some fantastic strips for Capp. His hillbilly girl drawings surpass anything.

These drawings make a grown man cry. I only wish I could draw like Al Capp.

My comments have been submitted. What's with all the high-horse security? Al Capp is one of my heroes.

"My comments have been submitted. What's with all the high-horse security?"

It's so psychos like you don't flood the comments with unreasonable harangues. Jeez -- relax, I check the site a couple times a day. There you go.

I remember Al Capp well. He was a talented artist & satirist in his early days.

But as he aged and became famous I saw and heard Al Capp many times on various interview shows, and he gradually mutated into an arrogant obnoxious ass.
In his later years, listening to him pontificate through the thick clouds of cigarette smoke that eventually killed him was an exercise in irritation.

His fame and accompanying arrogant behavior eventually led to his downfall. He was banned from campus lectures after numerous allegations of attempted sexual assaults on female students. This ended his public speaking career and his comic strip Lil' Abner was dropped from most newspapers.

While he may have been a brilliant satirist and talented artist in his early years, virtually no one missed him (my opinion) after he dropped out of sight.

I have no personal ax to grind with Al Capp and his legacy. But I was alive and an interested fan of his work during his lifetime.
I apologize for the lengthly post, but people deserve to know the truth about the man before he is canonized by the many revisionist historians that seem to be making the rounds these days.

Bottom line / summary:
Talented artist and satirist;
and an arrogant horny asshole.

Nice website btw. Will return to check it out more later.

Al Capp's career was brought down in the 1960s after accusations of (and at least one arrest for) forcing himself on coeds during his college lecture tours. Columnist Jack Anderson got sworn affadavits from several undergraduate women accusing Capp of trying to rape them. And throughout his career Capp was alleged to have forced himself on a number of Hollywood starlets including Grace Kelly and Goldie Hawn. Edie Adams, who played Daisy Mae in the original Broadway production of LI'L ABNER, remembers Capp sitting in the theater during rehearsals and exposing himself to the actresses.

In the wake of the recent Duke lacrosse case, you have to be VERY wary of rape charges against public figures -- especially within the confines of a college campus -- but the allegations against Capp apparently had merit.

A full-length, objective biography of Al Capp (on the order of David Michaelis' masterful new SCHULZ AND PEANUTS) has yet to be written.

Regarding a good bio of Capp:

I don't want to speak out of turn, but I was contacted by a mamber of Capp's family who is preparing a documentary on the man that will, I assume, include a look at the various controversies mentioned above.

I'm not saying it will be objective, but I'm sure it will be interesting. I look forward to it.

Supposedly Nixon helped make a rape charge against Capp go away. There's a reference to it on the watergate tapes. On his end Capp had to agree to end his "values" tour of college campuses.

The work represented here of Capp is typical of the hateful,sexist, bigoted relics of yesterdays media that we can be thankful are well behind us.
A classic example of what a twisted personality he was is the parody of rape in the cartoon above.
At best over rated, Capp was a classic example of the phrase "the empty can rattles the loudest".

Lest we remember

Part of what makes his art so compelling is that it's got a really strong sexual(ly repressed?) vibe, and Capp was obviously not the most well adjusted guy in the world. Sure, he was probably a creep but so are lots of interesting figures (ever see Dylan in Don't Look Back?).

In the late sixties Left and Liberal split.
As a wacky libertarian, Capp was furious.

Ridicule, by his hand, was funny.

And his strip was funny -- the bottom line.

He beautifully drew a comical strip.