Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977.

Among his earliest influences were Punch cartoonist–illustrator Phil May and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus, and Milt Gross.

Featuring vividly outlandish characters, bizarre situations, and equal parts suspense, slapstick, irony, satire, black humor, and biting social commentary, Li'l Abner is considered a classic of the genre.

Whatever energy Abner had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed, but virtuous girlfriend, until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry.

[26] Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes,[27] and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li'l Abner.

During World War II and for many years afterward, Capp worked tirelessly going to hospitals to entertain patients, especially to cheer recent amputees and explain to them that the loss of a limb did not mean an end to a happy and productive life.

[28] In 1940, an RKO movie adaptation starred Granville Owen (later known as Jeff York) as Li'l Abner, with Buster Keaton taking the role of Lonesome Polecat, and featuring a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle.

[29] Other highlights of that decade included the 1942 debut of Fearless Fosdick as Abner's "ideel" (hero); the 1946 Lena the Hyena Contest, in which a hideous Lower Slobbovian gal was ultimately revealed in the harrowing winning entry (as judged by Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, and Salvador Dalí) drawn by noted cartoonist Basil Wolverton; and an ill-fated Sunday parody of Gone With the Wind that aroused anger and legal threats from author Margaret Mitchell, and led to a printed apology within the strip.

In 1948, Capp reached a creative peak with the introduction of the Shmoos, lovable and innocent fantasy creatures who reproduced at amazing speed and brought so many benefits that, ironically, the world economy was endangered.

Following his close friend Milton Caniff's lead (with Steve Canyon), Capp had recently fought a successful battle with the syndicate to gain complete ownership of his feature when the Shmoos debuted.

Capp followed this success with other allegorical fantasy critters, including the aboriginal and masochistic "Kigmies", who craved abuse (a story that began as a veiled comment on racial and religious oppression), the dreaded "Nogoodniks" (or bad shmoos), and the irresistible "Bald Iggle", a guileless creature whose sad-eyed countenance compelled involuntary truthfulness—with predictably disastrous results.

The year 1956 saw the debut of Bald Iggle, considered by some Abner enthusiasts to be the creative high point of the strip, as well as Mammy's revelatory encounter with the "Square Eyes" Family—Capp's thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance.

In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named "Happy Vermin"—a caricature of Fisher—who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet (after sacking his previous "temporary" assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process).

Traveling in the same social circles, the two men engaged in a 20-year mutual vendetta, as described by the New York Daily News in 1998: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks.

The characters also sold chainsaws, underwear, ties, detergent, candy, soft drinks—including a licensed version of Capp's moonshine creation, Kickapoo Joy Juice—and General Electric and Procter & Gamble products, all requiring special artwork.

As is usual with collaborative efforts in comic strips, his name was the only one credited— although, sensitive to his own experience working on Joe Palooka, Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces.

Cartoonist Mell Lazarus, creator of Miss Peach and Momma, wrote a comic novel in 1963 entitled The Boss Is Crazy, Too which was partly inspired by his apprenticeship days working with Capp and his brother Elliot at Toby.

[50] In 2019, Jean Kilbourne was inspired by the MeToo movement to publish in Hogan's Alley her own experience of being groped and sexually solicited by Al Capp while doing freelance writing and research work for him in contemplation of a permanent job in 1967.

In the Golden Age of the American comic strip, successful cartoonists received a great deal of attention; their professional and private lives were reported in the press, and their celebrity was often nearly sufficient to rival their creations.

As Li'l Abner reached its peak years, and following the success of the Shmoos and other high moments in his work, Al Capp achieved a public profile that is still unparalleled in his profession, and arguably exceeded the fame of his strip.

For many years he simultaneously produced the daily strip, a weekly syndicated newspaper column, and a 500-station radio program ..." He ran the Boston Summer Theatre with The Phantom cartoonist Lee Falk, bringing in Hollywood actors such as Mae West, Melvyn Douglas, and Claude Rains to star in their live productions.

Capp also freelanced very successfully as a magazine writer and newspaper columnist, in a wide variety of publications including Life, Show, Pageant, The Atlantic, Esquire, Coronet, and The Saturday Evening Post.

Although Capp's endorsement activities never rivaled Li'l Abner's or Fearless Fosdick's, he was a celebrity spokesman in print ads for Sheaffer Snorkel fountain pens (along with colleagues and close friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly), and—with an irony that became apparent later—a brand of cigarettes (Chesterfield).

He published a column ("Wrong Turn Onto Sesame Street") challenging federally funded public television endowments in favor of educational comics—which, according to Capp, "didn't cost a dime in taxes and never had.

Capp's academic interests included being one of nineteen original "Trustees and Advisors" for "Endicott, Junior College for Young Woman", located in Pride's Crossing (Beverly), Massachusetts, which was founded in 1939.

Alongside his long-established caricatures of right-wing, big business types such as General Bullmoose and J. Roaringham Fatback, Capp began spoofing counterculture icons such as Joan Baez (in the character of Joanie Phoanie, a wealthy folksinger who offers an impoverished orphanage ten thousand dollars' worth of "protest songs").

In an April 1969 letter to Time, Capp insisted, "The students I blast are not the dissenters, but the destroyers—the less than 4% who lock up deans in washrooms, who burn manuscripts of unpublished books, who make combination pigpens and playpens of their universities.

Highlights of the strip's final decades include "Boomchik" (1961), in which America's international prestige is saved by Mammy Yokum, "Daisy Mae Steps Out" (1966), a female-empowering tale of Daisy's brazenly audacious "homewrecker gland", "The Lips of Marcia Perkins" (1967), a satirical, thinly-veiled commentary on venereal disease and public health warnings, "Ignoble Savages" (1968), in which the Mob takes over Harvard, and "Corporal Crock" (1973), in which Bullmoose reveals his reactionary cartoon role model, in a tale of obsession and the fanatical world of comic book collecting.

[65] In a December 1992 article for The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that President Richard Nixon and Charles Colson had repeatedly discussed the Capp case in Oval Office recordings that had recently been made available by the National Archives.

At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2009, IDW announced the upcoming publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays as part of their ongoing The Library of American Comics series.