Al Capp A Life to the Contrary Author:Denis Kitchen, Michael Schumacher More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-w... more »hammy." As a satirist, Capp was frequently compared to Mark Twain.Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp was a known sexual predator. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at anti-war protesters on campuses across the country.With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Schumacher and Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.« less
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