Number 2006: Al Capp, Li'l Abner, Frank Frazetta and Satellite Science Fiction

The August 1957 issue of digest-sized Satellite Science Fiction reprinted a Li’l Abner Sunday Comics five-week sequence that began October 23, 1955. Li’l Abner is trapped in a time capsule which no one can enter for 10,000 years. Reading Satellite editor Leo Margulies’ comments on Capp, you get the idea that Capp was a big science fiction fan, and maybe he was just what Margulies claimed. But Capp was primarily a satirist, and nothing was too wild when it came to pointing out fads and foibles in American culture during the Li’l Abner run from the thirties to the seventies. This story of a time capsule is less science fiction than a fantasy based on sexual jealousy. No matter...if it helped circulation for Satellite then it was all right to stretch the definition of science fiction. As for Al Capp, any publicity was good publicity.

This story is also reprinted in the book, Al Capp Li’l Abner The Frazetta Years Vol. 1 1954-1955 (2003), by editor Denis Kitchen and publisher Dark Horse, with color scans of Sunday comics pages from the original newspaper run. Frank Frazetta was an assistant to Capp. His later fame seemed to upset Capp, to the point of once denying Frazetta had ever worked for him. But he did, from the mid-fifties to the early sixties. Frazetta did pencils only for the Sunday strip, because his inks tended to overwhelm. Can’t show up the boss, you know. According to the Kitchen/Dark Horse book, for one day of work per week Frazetta earned $500 a week. In those days, when many in the labor force worked for $500 a month or less, Frazetta had a pretty good gig. But fortunately for us, he left the strip after being refused a raise by Capp. Frank went on to the work that made him world famous under his own name, with his style not buried under the inking of other artists.