LI'L ABNER: The Frazetta Years. Volume 1 (1954-55) by Al Capp.
Edited and Annotated by Denis Kitchen.

Before legendary artist Frank Frazetta became an American institution for his lush paintings of muscular barbarians and scantily clad women, he was drawing muscular hillbillies and scantily clad women for an earlier American institution: the comic strip Li'l Abner which boasted 60 million readers daily.

From 1954 till 1961 Frazetta toiled as a ghost for Al Capp, the most famous and successful cartoonist of his era. Except for a brief 1954 dailies sequence (when Frazetta drew himself as "Frankie the Biker" in a send-up of Marlon Brando's contemporary motorcycle film The Wild Ones) Frazetta's energy was focused on the Li'l Abner Sunday strips.

For the first time ever these gorgeous FULL-COLOR SUNDAY PAGES are being collected! Dark
Horse is publishing four comprehensive volumes. The color strips are being scanned from the best available archival sources. Volume will contains an introduction about Capp's assistants, including Frazetta and extensive annotations by Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen, who provided similar incisive text and annotations for Dark Horse's popular Little Annie Fanny books.

Volume One debuted in mid August 2003. It features The Bald Iggle (from Capp's Shmoo and Kigmy school of creatures with social messages), Loverboynik (a thinly disguised Liberace) and Capp's take on Dr. Frederic Wertham the anti-comics crusader, as well as Indian princess Minnie Mustache, Moonbeam McSwine, The Tigress, Daisy Mae Yokum and Gloria Van Wellbilt as only Frank Frazetta can draw them!!

None of these stories overlap with the black & white dailies collections compiled earlier by Kitchen Sink Press. Al Capp's color Sunday stories were completely separate continuities.

128 page hard cover book for only $18.95