Number 2500: Fearless Fosdick and Anyface, the man with the Plastic Man face

 

This adaptation for a comic book from the Li'l Abner comic strip starts with an interesting inside cover. (The same page appears in the next issue, #69, which was the last from Harvey Comics.) Al Capp, satirically speaking through Li'l Abner, goes after  those critics who complain about crime comic books. In my opinion Capp makes a common mistake, trying to answer the ardent comic book critics by using the argument that crime comics are no more dangerous than fairy tales or classic Edgar Allan Poe. The argument was doomed to fail. Far from seeing comic books as being akin to fairy tales or classics like Poe, the critics saw comic books as being aimed at children, and the publishers of comic books as being more like sleazy pornographers seducing the young.

In this issue of Li'l Abner, published by Harvey Comics before Al Capp and his brother, Elliott Caplin, started their own comic book company, Li’l Abner is obsessed with the “comical” strip, “Fearless Fosdick.” Lester Gooch, creator, writer and artist of Fosdick, has become mentally unstable, so much so that he is hiding in the broom closet of an asylum, drawing his strip. As a devoted Fosdick fan, Abner sits outside the door and a pretty nurse supplies him with the daily newspaper funnies and Abner’s favorite strip.

It is dark humor, but is it like a crime comic book? It appeared first in newspapers, with their internal censorship of anything that might bring down the wrath of their readers. Syndicate editors had to approve it before sending it to client newspapers. In the story Fosdick shoots a man who is standing with his wife and children (see the panel on top of this page), mistaking the dad for the villain Anyface. In the story there are at least a couple more panels with bullets going through heads, typical for a Fearless Fosdick episode. Capp was satirizing the Dick Tracy comic strip. Tracy creator Chester Gould’s narratives usually have the heroes escape the death traps, and the criminals aren’t incarcerated, but they usually end up dead before ever going to court, or prison.

I think Anyface, stretching out his face and able to make himself look like someone else, is inspired by Jack Cole and Plastic Man.

From Li'l Abner #68 (1949):

Number 2437: Li’l Abner, fanboy

Li’l Abner must have obsessive compulsive disorder, which is not unfamiliar to comic book collectors. He goes to great lengths for his Fearless Fosdick comic book (or “comical book,” as Abner calls comics). He is such a fan that he travels to the country of El Passionato to find the last surviving copy of the latest issue. Somehow, as the splash panel tells us, all the copies of that issue were lost at sea. What sea? In 1952, the year that Li’l Abner #87 was published, comics were printed in the U.S., except for some printed in Canada. Whatever...Al Capp's artistic license certainly makes for a colorful tale, having Abner in a country full of beautiful señoritas, and becoming El Presidente!

But, you say, why are we not seeing the other characters, Mammy, Pappy, Daisy Mae, and on down the line of Capp’s colorful cast? They just didn't figure into this story, so for a more traditional Li’l Abner story go to the link below.

Just click on the thumbnail for a tale of Sadie Hawkins Day in Dogpatch: