AL CAPP - ORIGINAL ART SIGNED - HFSID 252880

AL CAPP
Original and very rare 30x22¾ layout board for a 1966 Li'l Abner Strip, signed by Capp and with original art by him
Original art signed "Al/Capp". With notations in unknown hand in black, red and blue ink and in pencil. B/w, 30x22¾ comprised of six smaller sheets attached to each other, mounted on 30¼x24¼ cardstock. ©1966 News Syndicate Co., Inc. This incredibly rare item is a living part of cartooning history. It's a layout, dated only "Oct. 2", for a Li'l Abner strip and includes erased pencil marks, Whited-Out sections and notations by Capp and his assistants. Comic strips are often drawn in this large format. It allows the artist more room for adding details to his art, and these details are retained better when the strip is photographically reduced for publishing. In other words, this is an original piece of art that Capp himself worked on (possibly with the help of assistants, which many cartoonists use) and that was intended to be published as a Li'l Abner cartoon. Capp (1909-1979, born Alfred Gerald Capin in New Haven, Connecticut) lost his right leg in a trolley accident at the age of nine and spent five years in high school without receiving a diploma, yet went on to create one of America's most loved, and certainly longest-running, comic strip, Li'l Abner. He started out drawing Mister Gilfeather, a one-panel cartoon in New York City, a cartoon that he reportedly hated. He met Ham Fisher in 1933 and worked with him on Joe Palooka before beginnging the cartoon that he'd become known for: Li'l Abner, which appeared first, in The New York Mirror in 1934. Li'l Abner, which ran until Al Capp's retirement in 1977, detailed the exploits of the rustic inhabitants of the village of Dogpatch, USA and spawned, among other things, a Broadway musical that ran 693 performances from 1956 to 1958, a 1959 film with an Oscar-nominated score, a theme park in Marble Falls, Arkansas called Dogpatch USA (now closed) and the Sadie Hawkins dance, after a fictional Dogpatch holiday called Sadie Hawkins Day. Cartoon is encapsulated in plastic. Plastic encapsulation has pulled away from cardstock backing on right. Lightly toned, soiled, stained and creased. Edges of smaller sheets are toned at joints and slightly irregular at outside edges. Tape on left. Otherwise in fine condition.