Before legendary artist Frank Frazetta became an American institution for his lush paintings, 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 Sundays are being collected! Dark Horse is publishing four comprehensive 9" x 12" volumes. Each quarterly volume will contain an introduction and extensive annotations by Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen. Volume 1 features The Bald Iggle (from Capp's Shmoo and Kigmy school of creatures with social messages), Loverboynik (a thinly disguised Liberace) and Milton the Masked Martian (an early superhero parody) as well as Indian princess Minnie Mustache, Moonbeam McSwine, The Tigress, Daisy Mae Yokum and Gloria Van Wellbilt.
Log in to comment