Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. Li'l Abner featured a whole menagerie of allegorical animals over the years each one was designed to satirically showcase another disturbing aspect of human nature. All Rights Reserved. Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from, Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42. A superhuman dynamo, Mammy did all the household chores and provided her charges with no fewer than eight meals a day of "po'k chops" and "tarnips" (as well as local Dogpatch delicacies like "candied catfish eyeballs" and "trashbean soup"). Big Funds Need a 'Skunk Works' to Stir Ideas At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW and The Library of American Comics announced the upcoming publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays: Vol. They included Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson and, notably, a young Frank Frazetta, who penciled the Sunday continuity from studio roughs from 1954 to the end of 1961 before his fame as a fantasy artist. At one extreme, he displayed consistently devastating humor, while at the other, his mean-spiritedness came to the fore but which was which seems to depend on the commentator's own point of view. President Eisenhower needed something quicker, stronger, and more elusive. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. In the same neighborhood was a plastic factory that produced a terrible odor that permeated the tent. As a result, the XP-38 was the first 400mph fighter in the world. By 1960, Soviet radar and surface-to-air missile technology had caught up with the U-2. "There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood but only a fighting chance. One day, when the Department of the Navy was trying to reach the Lockheed management for the P-80 project, the call was accidentally transferred to Culvers desk. One month later, a young engineer named Clarence "Kelly" L. Johnson and his hand-picked team of engineers and mechanics delivered the XP-80 Shooting Star jet fighter proposal to the ATSC. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as a consultant on nearly all of them. Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. Capp was a genius. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Lil Abner, which was immensely popular from 1935 through the 1950s. [3] According to Ben Richs memoir, an engineer jokingly showed up to work one day wearing a Civil Defense gas mask. He constantly interspersed boldface type, and included prompt words in parentheses (chuckle!, sob!, gasp!, shudder!, smack!, drool!, cackle!, snort!, gulp!, blush!, ugh!, etc.) Capp is also the subject of an upcoming PBS American Masters documentary produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning. Privacy Terms of Use EU and UK Data Protection Notice Cookies, http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/CollierTrophies.html. Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). Al Capp was a master of the arts of marketing and promotion. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. Trusted to solve critical national needs for our warfighters, the Skunk Works never shies away from seemingly unsolvable challenges and has a reputation for solving hard problems quickly, quietly and affordably. White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp 's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was immensely popular from 1935 through the 1950s. The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects. Publicity campaigns were devised to boost circulation and increase public visibility of Li'l Abner, often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. Shortly after, the go-ahead was given for Lockheed to start developing the United States' first jet fighter. Schertz, Texas 78154. [13] The first YP-38 was built there before the team moved back to Lockheed's main factory a year later. The first topper was Washable Jones, a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost, which he pulls from the water. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. What is Skunkworks? | Webopedia In response to the question "Which side does Abner part his hair on? Over the years, Li'l Abner characters have inspired diverse compositions in pop, jazz, country and even rock 'n' roll: No comprehensive reprint of the series had been attempted until Kitchen Sink Press began publishing the Li'l Abner Dailies in hardcover and paperback, one year per volume, in 1988. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. In 1946 Capp persuaded six of the most popular radio personalities (Frank Sinatra, Kate Smith, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, Fred Waring and Smilin' Jack Smith) to broadcast a song he'd written for Daisy Mae: (Li'l Abner) Don't Marry That Girl!! Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as Old-time radio and the Burlesque stage. Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven fewer than was required.[4]. Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in Li'l Abner (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}343653N 1180707W / 34.614734N 118.118676W / 34.614734; -118.118676. Beginning in 1944, Li'l Abner was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham and Howard Swift. Fellow employees quickly adopted the name for their mysterious division of Lockheed and eventually "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works.". From then on, he referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location as to exactly where it was supposed to be located. [citation needed]. Li'l Abner Yokum was a hillbilly who lived in Dogpatch somewhere in the mountains. For other uses, see, United States Patent and Trademark Office, "Cherokee rocket scientist leaves heavenly gift", "Lockheed Skunk Works' next-generation U-2 morphs into 'TR-X', "Aircraft Company Remodels Old Distillery", "Nominet UK Dispute Resolution Service DRS 04100 Lockheed Martin Corporation vs. UK Skunkworks Ltd Decision of Appeal Panel", "Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works Celebrates Diamond Anniversary", "75 Years of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works", "75 years on, Lockheed's Skunk Works is still innovating", "Opinion: Johnson's Skunk Works legacy is in safe hands", "Analysis: Does Skunk Works hiring binge indicate secret new programme? Privacy Policy. Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. A 1950 cover story in Time even included photos of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. City Building Map The comprehensive series titled Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, is planned to be a reprinting of the complete 43-year history of Li'l Abner[60] spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010. The style of the Fosdick sequences closely mimicked Tracy, including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping mortality rate, the crosshatched shadows, and the lettering style even Gould's familiar signature was parodied in Fearless Fosdick. A plump, juicy Hammus Alabammus is the rarest and most vital ingredient of "ecstasy sauce", an indescribably delicious gourmet delicacy. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the . Lena the Hyena makes a brief animated appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. A customer would go to the Skunk Works with a request, and on a handshake the project would begin no contracts in place, no official submittal process. (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were almost certainly an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created his irreverent Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same subversive manner. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." In the comic, there was a running joke about a mysterious and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works," where a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. Warren M. Bodie, journalist, historian, and Skunk Works engineer from 1977 to 1984, wrote that engineering independence, elitism and secrecy of the Skunk Works variety were demonstrated earlier when Lockheed was asked by Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey (later air force brigadier general) to build for the United States Army Air Corps a high speed, high altitude fighter to compete with German aircraft. ", "Al Capp Replies to Critic of Newspaper Comic Strips;", "Li'l Abner Lost In Hollywood by Michael H. Price", "Gov. as well as some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's imagination: Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. The U-2 ceased overflights when Francis Gary Powers was shot down during a mission on May 1, 1960, while over Russia. It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified R&D programs, and exotic aircraft platforms. By 1973, Pentagon officials were calling for the creation of an attack aircraft that could fly undetected past enemy radar. With adult readers far outnumbering juveniles, Li'l Abner forever cleared away the concept that humor strips were solely the domain of adolescents and children. Al Capp ended his comic strip with the final gesture of setting a date for Sadie Hawkins Day. Many times a customer would come to the Skunk Works with a request and on a handshake the project would begin, with no contracts in place, no official submittal process. About Mind Works Counseling | Anxiety Counseling | San Antonio, TX 78230 There are conflicting observations about the birth of Skunk Works. This project marked the birth of what would become the Skunk Works, with founder Kelly Johnson at its helm. Li'l Abner - Cast of Characters - Supporting Characters and Villains On July 3, 1963, the plane reached a sustained speed of Mach 3 at an astounding 78,000 feet, and remains the worlds fastest and highest-flying manned aircraft. [7] In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip "ideel", Fearless Fosdick. After a fatal mid-air collision on the fourth launch, the drones were re-built as D-21Bs, and launched with a rocket booster from B-52s. Pappy Yokum wasn't always feckless, however. Fosdick also achieved considerable exposure as the long-running advertising spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, a popular men's hair product of the postwar period. During most of the epic, the impossibly dense Abner exhibited little romantic interest in her voluptuous charms (much of it visible daily thanks to her famous polka-dot peasant blouse and cropped skirt). The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. In the comic, there was a running joke about a mysterious and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works," where a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. This vital reconnaissance, unobtainable by other means, averted a war in Europe and a nuclear crisis in Cuba. From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. During AirVenture 2003, for example, a 4-year-old girl took one look at a picture of an artists drawing of the Lockheed Martin Space plane with the distinctive skunk on the tail and asked if it was a ride at Disneyland because the mascot was obviously Flower from the movie Bambi.. Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little prcieux beside Capp!" Today's column maps the scope of change. Skunk Works is an industry leader in rapid prototyping, pushing the boundaries of whats possible to quickly design, develop and test innovative solutions. In July 1938, while the rest of Lockheed was busy tooling up to build Hudson reconnaissance bombers to fill a British contract, a small group of engineers was assigned to fabricate the first prototype of what would become the P-38 Lightning. Schertz, TX | Official Website Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. When the starving and broke Capp first sold Li'l Abner in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. Most of the old Skunk Works buildings in Burbank were demolished in the late 1990s to make room for parking lots. It became a woman-empowering rite at high schools and college campuses, long before the modern feminist movement gained prominence. Just look at Fearless Fosdick a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Other news is the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt), and a picture of Germany's "new leader" Adolf Hitler who claims to love peace while reviewing 20,000 new planes (April 21, 1933). Just four years later, amidst growing fears over a potential Soviet missile attack on the United States, Skunk Works engineerswho often worked ten hours a day, six days a weekcreated the U-2, the worlds first dedicated spy plane. The name was adapted by the Lockheed Corporation, the predecessor of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, more than 50 years ago. About - SKONKWERKS.ORG Both the Trump and Panic parodies were drawn by EC legend, Will Elder. The name stuck. Li'l Abner provided a whole new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for Pogo, Feiffer, Doonesbury and MAD. The formal contract for the XP-80 did not arrive at Lockheed until October 16, 1943; some four months after work had already begun. Boody Rogers' Babe was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks with many similarities to Li'l Abner. The Lightning team was temporarily moved to the 3G Distillery, a smelly former bourbon works where the first YP-38 (constructor's number 2202) was built. The razor-jawed title character (Li'l Abner's "ideel") was perpetually ventilated by flying bullets until he resembled a slice of Swiss cheese. [66] The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. Skunk Works - Wikiwand [11] His first words were "po'k chop", and that remained his favorite food. "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. It was a commentary on human nature itself. Aquatech | Will Sarni on why we need a Skunk Works in water Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview. As with virtually all Skunk Works projects that followed, the mission was secretive and the deadline was remarkably tight. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was popular in the 1940s and '50s. or even Little Annie Fanny. This was followed by a heated conversation among the adults who advised her that Flower was too bashful to go into space, and it couldnt be Pepe Le Pew, another famous cartoon skunk, because he wasnt serious enough to be in the space program. It didnt really matter, since he was firing me about twice a day anyways. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). Skunk Works - Wikipedia And virtually all cartoonists remain content with their diluted share of any merchandising revenue their syndicates arrange. Terrifically long hours. German jets had appeared over Europe. Ben Rich and "Kelly" Johnson set the origin as June 1943 in Burbank, California; they relate essentially the same chronology in their autobiographies. Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. The next comic frame says: HIDE FRIED, "Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the, "ABNER" was the name given to the first codebreaking computer used by the, The original Dogpatch is a historical part of San Francisco dating back to the 1860s that escaped the, Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Earthquake McGoon, Lonesome Polecat, Hairless Joe, Sadie Hawkins, Silent Yokum and Fearless Fosdick all found their way onto the, Al Capp always claimed to have effectively created the, Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. "A wish is a wish," says the genie. Cute, lovable and intelligent (arguably smarter than Abner, Tiny or Pappy), she was accepted as part of the family ("the youngest", as Mammy invariably introduces her). [64] The character was voiced by Frank Graham.[65]. compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp. The respondent company argued that Lockheed "used its size, resources and financial position to employ 'bullyboy' tactics against a very small company. I'll never knock his talent."[56]. In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Syndicate, a thinly veiled dig at UFS. Brown, Rodger, "Dogpatch USA: The Road to Hokum" article, Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42, explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, 418 Search and Rescue Operational Training Squadron, "This Day in Jewish History / Al Capp, Choleric Creator of Li'l Abner, Dies an Embittered Man", Li'l Abner "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Daisy Mae "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Mammy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Pappy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Honest Abe "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Tiny Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Marryin' Sam "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Kickapoo Joy Juice page at deniskitchen.com, Joe Btfsplk "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary Michael Schumacher, Denis Kitchen Google Books, General Bullmoose "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Earthquake McGoon "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Evil-Eye Fleegle "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Sadie Hawkins "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Fearless Fosdick "biography" at deniskitchen.com, The Shmoo "biography" at deniskitchen.com. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. [12] Pursued by local lovelies Hopeful Mudd and Boyless Bailey, Tiny was even dumber and more awkward than Abner, if that can be imagined. The Skunk Works Legacy | Lockheed Martin Some of the Skunk Works' most notable aircraft have received the prestigious trophy, which bears the name of the past publisher and early president of the Aero Club of America, Robert J. Collier. During the late 1990s when designing Pixar's building, Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs visited a Skunkworks Building which influenced Steve's design. The phrase originated in 1943, during World War II, when Lockheed Corporation built America's first operational jet fighter. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean. ", signaled the end of all further discussion. one-page Sally and the Gang story. Through Li'l Abner, the American comic strip achieved unprecedented relevance in the postwar years, attracting new readers who were more intellectual, more informed on current events, and less likely to read the comics (according to Coulton Waugh, author of The Comics, 1947).