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LI'L ABNER: The Frazetta
Years. Volume 1 (1954-55) by Al Capp.
Edited and Annotated by Denis Kitchen.
Before legendary artist Frank
Frazetta became an American institution
for his lush paintings of muscular barbarians
and scantily clad women, he was drawing muscular
hillbillies and scantily clad women for an earlier
American institution: the comic strip Li'l
Abner which boasted 60 million
readers daily.
From 1954 till 1961 Frazetta
toiled as a ghost for Al Capp, the most
famous and successful cartoonist of his era.
Except for a brief 1954 dailies sequence (when
Frazetta drew himself as "Frankie the Biker" in
a send-up of Marlon Brando's
contemporary motorcycle film The Wild Ones)
Frazetta's energy was focused on the Li'l
Abner Sunday strips.
For the first time ever these gorgeous FULL-COLOR
SUNDAY PAGES are being collected! Dark
Horse is publishing four comprehensive volumes.
The color strips are being scanned from the best
available archival sources. Volume will contains
an introduction about Capp's assistants,
including Frazetta and extensive annotations by
Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen,
who provided similar incisive text and
annotations for Dark Horse's popular Little
Annie Fanny books.
Volume One debuted in mid August
2003. It features The
Bald Iggle (from Capp's Shmoo and Kigmy
school of creatures with social messages),
Loverboynik (a thinly disguised Liberace)
and Capp's take on Dr. Frederic Wertham the
anti-comics crusader, as well as Indian princess
Minnie Mustache, Moonbeam McSwine,
The Tigress, Daisy Mae Yokum and
Gloria Van Wellbilt as only Frank
Frazetta can draw them!!
None of these stories overlap with the
black & white dailies collections compiled
earlier by Kitchen Sink Press. Al Capp's
color Sunday stories were completely separate
continuities.
128 page hard cover book.
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