Al Capp was a renowned American cartoonist and humorist, best known for creating the iconic comic strip "Li'l Abner". Born Alfred Gerald Caplin in 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut, to a family of Latvian Jews, Capp grew up in poverty and developed a darker worldview and a sardonic sense of humor due to his childhood struggles.
Capp's early life was marked by tragedy, including being run down by a trolley car in 1919, which resulted in the amputation of his left leg above the knee. He eventually received a prosthetic leg and adopted a slow way of walking. His father, an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy, and Capp went on to study the art styles of various illustrators and cartoonists.
Despite his impoverished background, Capp pursued a career in cartooning, attending three different art schools but being kicked out of each due to non-payment of tuition. He eventually hitchhiked to New York City, where he supported himself by drawing advertising strips and was later hired by the Associated Press.
Capp's big break came in 1934 when he created "Li'l Abner", a comic strip that depicted the lives of a fictional clan of hillbillies in an impoverished mountain village. The strip quickly gained popularity, with 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and reprints in 28 foreign countries. Capp won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year and posthumously received the 1979 Elzie Segar Award for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning".
In addition to "Li'l Abner", Capp created two other comic strips, "Abbie an' Slats" and "Long Sam", both of which were moderately successful. He was also known for his satirical parodies of other comic strips, including "Fearless Fosdick", a parody of "Dick Tracy".
Capp's politics were often controversial, and he was an outspoken liberal during the 1950s, satirizing politicians like Joseph McCarthy. However, his views shifted to the right in the 1960s, and he became a target for satire himself, particularly among campus radicals and counterculture icons. Despite this, he continued to support struggles for racial equality and gay rights.
Capp's personal life was also marked by controversy, including a 1972 arrest on charges of "attempted adultery" in Wisconsin. The resulting negative publicity led to hundreds of newspapers dropping his comic strip, and his popularity continued to decline in the years leading up to his retirement in 1977.
Al Capp died in 1979 at the age of 70 from emphysema, a result of his lifelong chain smoking habit. He was buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2004.
