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A seminal and [[LongRunners long-running]] (1934–77) newspaper [[http://www.lil-abner.com/ comic strip]] by Al Capp, which detailed the bizarre lives and loves of the hillbilly inhabitants of Dogpatch, USA. The title character was the [[ComicBookTime perpetually 19-year-old]] big-hearted lunkhead, the son of spitfire Pansy "Mammy" Yokum and the dull-witted useless Lucifer "Pappy" Yokum. For many of the early years of the strip, the marriage-fearing Abner was pursued aggressively by the lovely Daisy Mae Scragg; in 1952, Capp gave in and let her finally marry Abner. The strip was known for its vicious satire of current events, initially from a more liberal perspective though switching to a conservative bent in its twilight years as Capp grew older. Many of the storylines focused on the innocent Abner being placed in positions where he was easy prey for corrupt villains.

At its peak, ''Li'l Abner'' ran in over 900 newspapers in North America and Europe, and an estimated 70 million Americans read it every day. The wedding storyline became a major media event, even making the cover of ''Life'' magazine. Al Capp became a regular face on television during the height of the strip's popularity, and one of the few cartoonists to remain a public figure in his own right. Eventually, time took its toll, especially in the 1960s when he drifted into becoming a right wing crank sneering at young folk singers and political activists both in his strip and in public speaking appearance, even picking a public argument with Music/JohnLennon during his famous Bed-In. In 1971, that public reputation was shattered forever when he was arrested on sex related charges and papers began to drop his strip in droves. In 1974, Capp, feeling the previous five years of his strip were terrible and his health failing rapidly, called it quits. The strip's swan song received even more massive coverage in the press, with many calling it the end of an era. Capp himself passed away in 1979.

During the strip's run, it was adapted into two films, a [[Theatre/LilAbner Broadway musical]] (which served as the basis for the second film), a radio serial that ran from 1939 to 1940 and five short animated films made by Creator/ColumbiaCartoons in [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation 1944]]. While the series itself never became a television show (despite an unsold pilot airing just once on NBC in 1967), ''Fearless Fosdick,'' a ruthless parody of ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'', briefly spun-off into his own 13-episode puppet show that was swiftly canceled, while the Shmoo appeared in two Saturday Morning Cartoon series for Hanna-Barbera in 1979 and again in 1980–84 (both times sharing billing with [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble]]). A theme park, Dogpatch USA, opened in 1968, though it was largely unsuccessful for most of its life and closed in 1993 ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpatch_USA though most of it is still standing]]). The strip is also credited with introducing several colloquialisms into the English language, including "schmooze", "irregardless", "druthers", and even the word "shmoo" has entered into at least four separate fields of science. The strip was also the original source of "Sadie Hawkins Day" dances.

[[ArchivePanic Due to sheer length]], a comprehensive reprint has yet to reach completion. Through the decades, numerous smaller collections of storylines were released, until 1988 when Kitchen Sink Press attempted the mammoth task of reprinting the series in its entirety, reaching 27 volumes before the company unfortunately went under in 1999, getting the series only to 1961. IDW began another attempt at a reprint in 2010, starting all the way from the beginning and so far having released 7 out of a projected 21 volumes.

United Features Syndicate continues to run free daily reruns of a select number of classic Li'l Abner strips on [[http://comics.com/lil_abner_classics/ comics.com]] (though these are hardly complete, jump from plot to plot without conclusions to many of them, and rerun the same storylines over and over).

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!!Provides examples of:

%% * AbhorrentAdmirer: Sadie Hawkins and Lena the Hyena.
* AmbidextrousSprite: A rare non-video game example; Li'l Abner had an odd design quirk where the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. When asked “Which side does Abner part his hair on?," creator Al Capp answered, [[TakeAThirdOption “Both.”]]
* ArtEvolution: The earliest strips used a far more realistic style to the point that the characters were hardly recognizable.
* AuthorTract: When Capp started aging and subsequently got left behind in the generational gap, he would devote a great deal of time firing off {{Take That}}s at left-wing political figures via the strip.
* BreakoutCharacter: The Shmoo species has been incredibly popular in the series. It soon spun off its own comic. Creator/HannaBarbera gave one of them a series in 1979. It was a Scooby-Doo knockoff but he was the main attraction. The next year he was in the Flintstone Comedy Show in the segment Bedrock Cops.
%% * ButterFace: Sadie Hawkins
* ChasteHero: Abner, to a comical degree.
%% * CoolOldLady: Pansy Yokum
* CowboyCop: Fearless Fosdick, fittingly enough as a parody of ''ComicStrip/DickTracy''.
* CrapsackWorld: Dogpatch residents live in perpetual BarefootPoverty, but they have it better than Lower Slobbovia, a mockery of GloriousMotherRussia where everyone is half-buried in snow.
* CriminalDoppelganger: Gat Garson was Abner's double. More than that, Garson's parents were identical to Abner's parents...right down to the fingerprints!
* DeepSouth: Dogpatch is inhabited with ignorant shoeless poverty-stricken hillbillies.
* DistractedByTheSexy: Stupefyin' Jones is an extreme case, in that she paralyzes any man who glimpses her.
* DubNameChange: In Sweden, the comic, and main character, was named "Knallhatten", a slang term for the percussion cap on rifles which at some point had become slang for the Swedish equivalent of "redneck" or "hayseed".
* EmphasizeEverything: The strip was notorious for having '''LOTS OF BOLD TYPE!!''' and often ending sentences with '''TWO EXCLAMATION POINTS!!''' Capp did this deliberately, since it made it easier for the strip to catch the reader's eye on the comics page.
* EverybodySmokes: Many of the characters, especially the older men, have a corncob pipe permanently in their mouths.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The ''Fearless Fosdick'' adversary, the Chippendale Chair, is, in fact, a sentient Chippendale Chair.
* TheFaceless: Lena the Hyena started out like this, but Capp finally held a contest to depict her, which was won by Basil Wolverton's [[https://catchafallingstarbook.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/lena.jpg infamous monstrosity]].
* {{Fanservice}}: Capp's work [[UnbuiltTrope pre-dated the expression,]] but this strip still is a very strong example. The strip didn't rely on RuleOfSexy - it was genuinely humorous quite aside from the eye candy - but unlike almost any other media in TheFifties, it [[RefugeInAudacity reveled]] in this. The main character was a beefcake, his unwanted paramour was impossibly curvy, and they were far from the only ones.
* FarmersDaughter: Pretty much all of the women.
* FunetikAksent: Everyone that doesn't speak plain English, especially the main characters.
* FunWithAcronyms: The student group SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything).
* HayseedName: Li'l Abner, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, Daisy Mae... heck, just about everyone.
* GargleBlaster: Kickapoo Joy Juice moonshine, the fumes of which can melt metal rivets.
* GeneralFailure: Jubilation T. Cornpone, the founder of Dogpatch. It's implied he was so bad at his job, he's the main reason the Confederacy lost the Civil War!
%% * HalfWittedHillbilly: Several, though Pappy Yokum probably leads the pack. Li'l Abner himself wavers between this and KindheartedSimpleton.
* HeadTurningBeauty: Several cases.
** [[MeaningfulName Stupefyin']] Jones is the most evident.
** To a lesser degree, there were a wide variety of [[ImpossibleHourglassFigure shapely]] girls that would attract [[DistractedByTheSexy attention]] from the menfolk. [[IncorruptiblePurePureness Except Little Abner himself, of course.]]
* HeManWomanHater: Abner, at least at first. It's not necessarily that he isn't attracted to them, but the second they show any interest in ''him'' ([[MrFanservice which they tend to do]]) he wants to run away.
* HeroicBuild: Li'l Abner has this, his brother Tiny takes it up to eleven.
* HonestJohnsDealership: Available Jones has everything for sale, up to and including his cousin Stupifyin'.
* IdiotHero: This is most blatantly lampshaded on the numerous occasions when Abner survives being shot in the head precisely ''because'' the shot was to his head, survives falls from great heights because he happened to land on his head, etc.
%% * IssueDrift: See Creator Breakdown
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The [[ShowWithinAShow strip within a strip]] ''Fearless Fosdick'' was often used to comment on the conventions of the actual strip. The story of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's marriage came about because Abner took a vow to do whatever Fosdick did in his strip, and Fosdick ended up marrying. Notably, this story also poked fun at the perpetual [[StatusQuoIsGod status quo]] of most comic strips: while Fosdick eventually [[AllJustADream wakes up and realizes that he wasn't married after all]], returning to status quo, the same was not true for ''Li'l Abner'', as Daisy Mae and Abner remained married for the rest of the strip!
--> '''Daisy Mae:''' Look! In today's paper, Fearless Fosdick proposed, an' Prudence Pimpleton accepted!\\
'''Abner:''' Haw! It don't mean nothin'! It's th'usual comical strip trick, t'keep stupid readers excited!\\
''(After Abner proposes)''\\
'''Daisy Mae:''' Oh, how mizzuble all this is! Th'biggest moment in mah life, an' it's jest a joke fum a comical strip!
%% * LetsMeetTheMeat
* MeaningfulName: ''Everyone'' in this strip had a name that either explained or made fun of their character.
* MrFanservice: Abner's younger brother Tiny is even taller and better built then his big bro, who's no slouch himself. Early on he looked more comical since he had inherited his father's big nose, but then his nose was broken, he got surgery and he ended up as traditionally handsome as Abner.
* MsFanservice: Daisy Mae has blonde hair and a tiny hourglass figure. A whole bunch of others share these similar traits, and the men of the comic (save the title character himself) gawk at them just as much as the reader is invited to. Stupefyin' Jones is a ''weaponized'' variant.
%% * MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop: The shmoo take the "multipurpose" aspect of this trope up to eleven.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Most of the villains and pretty much anyone Capp had a beef with wound up with a name like this. These include Nightmare Alice, Evil-Eye Fleegle, and ''Fearless Fosdick'''s syndicate, Squeezeblood Syndicate.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: All celebrity parodies had their names changed, mainly so Capp could use them whenever he wanted. One of the more notorious was ''Fearless Fosdick'' author Lester Gooch, a parody of ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'' author Chester Gould. Gooch was frequently portrayed as mentally deranged, and only capable of writing well when he ''was'' insane. Another particularly vicious example was "Joanie Phoanie," who stood in for Music/JoanBaez.
* NoOneShouldSurviveThat: Lil' Abner has survived virtually everything - death by poison gas, bullets to the chest, innumerable cases of falling damage, quicksand, and so on. Rather than rely on unlikely coincidence, Capp preferred RefugeInAudacity.
--> '''Abner:''' That were a long fall! Goo' thing ah landed on my haid, or I could have got hurt!
* NotNowWereTooBusyCryingOverYou: In a story, this was inverted. Li'l Abner has escaped what seemed like certain death, and goes to Dogpatch to find some of its citizens singing a funeral hymn for their poor deceased Li'l Abner. When he sees this and learns that they're mourning him, he starts singing along in a very sad tone of voice, because who wouldn't feel sad at his own funeral?
* OnlyAFleshWound: Fearless Fosdick suffers several to the point that it's a ParodiedTrope.
* OrphanageOfFear: One storyline in the late 1930s had Abner go to an orphanage after his parents are (supposedly) dead. It exaggerates the whole trope to its ends: he's forced to change into a new "uniform" (rags), the orphanage master gives bare bones to the orphans with lots of food for himself and whips the orphans, but Abner and the orphans ultimately stage a mutiny.
* OurFounder: Confederate General Jubilation T. Cornpone, who in the musical even gets his own song about his "great" deeds in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. He was, in fact, such a horrible general that at least according to the musical, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln credited him with single-handedly helping the Confederacy ''lose'' the war.
* PersonalRaincloud: Joe Btfsplk always appears with one of these hanging over him.
* APigNamedPorkchop: Salomey the pig's name is a play on "salami."
* ThePigPen: Moonbeam [=McSwine=] is a physically stunning woman, but prefers to lounge around in literal pig pens.
* PovertyForComedy: One of the staples of the comic. Everyone in Dogpatch is ridiculously poor and on the brink of starvation, and it's all PlayedForLaughs. Al Capp himself grew up poor and took a fair bit of inspiration from his childhood -- just exaggerated to comical extremes. Lower Slobbovia makes Dogpatch seem downright wealthy in comparison.
* PrefersGoingBarefoot: Abner himself is one of the few characters who actually wears shoes, while virtually everyone else goes barefoot.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: The Nogoodniks (the evil version of the Shmoos) had "li'l red eyes." They devoured "good" Shmoos, were the sworn enemies of "hoomanity," and wreaked havoc on Dogpatch.
* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: The Shmoos, which spawned a merchandising mania... until Capp finally got so tired of them overshadowing his strip that he had them all killed off.
%% * {{Ruritania}}: Lower Slobbovia.
* SelfDeprecation: "You don't realize what a handy-cap bein' sane '''is''' to [[TakeThatMe a cartoonist!]]"
* ShowWithinAShow: ''Fearless Fosdick'', which eventually became famous in and of its own right.
%% * StrawmanPolitical: Again, lots of them.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: A curious example in Tiny, Abner's younger brother. While he never replaced Abner in the strip itself, he did take on the UnresolvedSexualTension part after Abner and Daisy Mae got married, and notably became the protagonist in the annual Sadie Hawkins Day Race strips.
%% * TakeThat: Whatever or whomever had recently pissed off Al Capp.
%% * TastesLikeChicken: Fried Shmoo.
* TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain: Getting shot in the head is a minor injury for Abner, because his head contains nothing that he can't function normally without.
* TorsoWithAView: Any man or beast that gets shot tends to be left with large clean round holes where the bullet passed.
* UnkemptBeauty: Dogpatch women who weren't either elderly (Mammy Yokum) or positively hideous (Lena the Hyena) tended to fall into this category, but Moonbeam [=McSwine=], who provides the page image for the trope, is worth special mention. Lil' Abner himself is a male example.
* UnresolvedSexualTension: This pretty much defined the first 18 years of the strip when it came to stories about Daisy Mae. Two years after they finally tied the knot, Capp tried to recreate the dynamic by introducing Abner's 15 and a half "y'ars" old brother Tiny, who was then endlessly pursued by Hopeful Mudd and Boyless Bailey.
* WhamEpisode: The storyline where Li'l Abner pledges to marry Daisy Mae if [[ShowWithinAShow Fearless Fosdick]] marries his sweetheart. The story constantly [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] the fact that StatusQuoIsGod and that marriage storylines are always fakeouts... but this time it isn't, and Abner is as surprised as the reader to discover that he and Daisy Mae are actually, permanently married.
%% * WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: Wolf Gal.
* YourHeartsDesire: Shmoos were a species discovered by Li'l Abner in the Valley of the Shmoon. They loved humans unconditionally, had a phenomenal rate of reproduction, and provided humanity with ''everything'' they needed for subsistence. They gave milk, laid eggs (a few had even mastered laying ''hard-boiled'' eggs, and one even managed an ''entire cheesecake''), and acted as pets and beasts of burden. A human could cause a Shmoo to commit [[{{Pun}} Shmooicide]] just by looking at it hungrily, at which point its skin could be cut thin for cloth, thick for leather, boiled to harden into a timber substitute; its eyes used for buttons, its whiskers for toothpicks: also, of course, its flesh was boneless, and delicious in several different ways, depending on how you cooked it. [[spoiler: As soon as this miracle animal became known to the outside world, American big businessmen attempted to wipe them out, since a solution to world hunger and suffering would have destroyed their profits.]]
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