(Although it is also the approximate Northern European pronunciation of the name "Joachim".) Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil becuz it's nicer!" The demise of KSP in 1999 stopped the reprint series at Volume 27 (1961). The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) A team engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capps comic strip, Lil Abner, in which there was a running joke about a mysterious place deep in the forest called the Skonk Works. There, a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. "[43] Capp has been compared, at various times, to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Rabelais. Today, the Skunk Works appears to be working on another unconventional project to build a (likely unmanned) hypersonic spy/bomber jet unofficially dubbed the SR-72. The ambitious puppet show was created and directed by puppeteer Mary Chase, written by Everett Crosby and voiced by John Griggs, Gilbert Mack and Jean Carson. But where did the term come from? or even Little Annie Fanny. The name "Skunk Works" and the skunk design are now registered trademarks of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. The formal contract for the XP-80 didnt arrive at Lockheed until Oct. 16, 1943, four months after work had already begun. Al Capp was a master of the arts of marketing and promotion. An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2km2) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas. During the late 1990s when designing Pixar's building, Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs visited a Skunkworks Building which influenced Steve's design. Other familiar silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, and ex-Keystone Cops Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Al St. John. Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff). 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. made famous between 1934 and 1977 as the home of professional mattress tester Li'l Abner, in the comic strip written and drawn by Al . He challenged the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation and hindered progress. Of the 552 public libraries in Texas, only 73 received this award in 2022. Fosdick's own wedding to longtime fiance Prudence Pimpleton turned out to be a dream but Abner and Daisy's ceremony, performed by Marryin' Sam, was permanent. Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. The comic derivation is true, said Dianne Knippel, director of communications for Lockheed Martin Co. She directed us to LockheedMartin.com, where we learned that the name came about during World War II when engineer Kelly Johnson brought together a select team to develop new aircraft. But Lockheeds chief engineer, Clarence Kelly Johnson, simply fielded all requests and relayed to his handpicked band of Skunk Works employees what needed to be done. It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994. ", signaled the end of all further discussion. Capp himself originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the faces and hands of the characters. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[51]. City of Schertz. The term Skunk Works is synonymous with the research and development department of the Lockheed Martin Co. [38] Other promotional tie-ins included the Lena the Hyena Contest (1946), the Name the Shmoo Contest (1949), the Nancy O. In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp", creator of "Li'l Adam". The once informal nickname is now theregistered trademarkof the company: Skunk Works. This would prove to be a common practice within the Skunk Works. Harvey. Al Capp also wrote two other daily comic strips:[4]. Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven fewer than was required.[4]. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. 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. In America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the overtly misanthropic subtext of Li'l Abner: Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. The essential spirit of the division was captured perfectly on July 15, 1955, in an entry from Kelly Johnsons logbook, after a frantic race to ready the U-2 for its inaugural test flight: Airplane essentially completed. As utterly wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse. During September 2015 the proposed aircraft was deemed to have developed into more of a tactical reconnaissance aircraft, instead of strategic reconnaissance.[11]. It has also developed. 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. A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances,[68] followed by a nationwide tour. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. [1] In November 1941, Kelsey gave the unofficial nod to Johnson and the P-38 team to engineer a drop tank system to extend range for the fighter, and they completed the initial research and development without a contract. One main building still remains at 2777 Ontario Street in Burbank (near San Fernando Road), now used as an office building for digital film post-production and sound mixing. 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. Li'l Abner's mom is the only character in the Dogpatch universe capable of defeating him in hand-to-hand combat. "Skonk Works", Culver repeated. The five titles were: Amoozin But Confoozin, Sadie Hawkins Day, A Peekoolyar Sitcheeyshun, Porkuliar Piggy and Kickapoo Juice. The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). [37] Washable Jones later appeared in the strip in a Shmoo-related storyline in 1949, and he appeared with the Shmoos in two one-shot comics Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels (1950, a premium for Oxydol laundry detergent) and Washable Jones and the Shmoo #1 (1953, published by the Capp-owned publisher Toby Press). Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. We offers a wide array of diagnostic, psychotherapy, and consultation services for children, adolescents, adults and families. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles,[58] the new Abner was approved by Capp's widow, and brother Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn. City Building Map He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. Implementation of Auto GCAS on the F-35 is anticipated five years earlier than originally planned. Kelly Johnson's elite engineering group was originally housed in a rented circus tent adjacent to a smelly plastics factory. Without any formal office to spare, the group rented an old circus tent, "and on a handshake the project would begin, no contracts in place, no official submittal process." Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li'l Abner," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989). Evil-Eye Fleegle and his "whammy" make an animated cameo appearance in the U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project training film, Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack (1950). By 1960, Soviet radar and surface-to-air missile technology had caught up with the U-2. One day, Culver's phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking." I am proud to see the classic logo - my father worked for more than 30 years at Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects, known as Skunk Works. I'll never knock his talent."[56]. In one storyline, he lives up to his nickname when during a nationwide search for a pair of socks sewn by Betsy Ross; after finding that his father was the current owner and preparing to trade them for the reward (a handshake from the President of the United States), he confesses at the last second that they were not his to give. The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. ", "Wal, fry mah hide!" Everybody almost dead.. [29] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. Women and girls take the initiative in inviting the man or boy of their choice out on a date almost unheard of before 1937 typically to a dance attended by other bachelors and their assertive dates. [57] "When he retired Li'l Abner, newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. Lower Slobbovia and Dogpatch are both comic examples of modern dystopian satire. Hot Dogs! Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature and grotesquerie, the strip's overall place in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. An attack aircraft that rendered itself invisible to enemy radar. Local attractions that reappeared in the strip included the West Po'k Chop Railroad; the "Skonk Works", a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch; and the General Jubilation T. Cornpone memorial statue. White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. Its name was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner . Skunk Works meaning and philosophy explained. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. [44] Journalism Quarterly and Time have both called him "the Mark Twain of cartoonists". Charlton published the short-lived Hillbilly Comics by Art Gates in 1955, featuring "Gumbo Galahad", who was a dead ringer for Li'l Abner, as was Pokey Oakey by Don Dean, which ran in MLJ's Top-Notch Laugh and Pep Comics. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence. Capp derived the family name "Yokum" as a combination of yokel and hokum. Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. 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. "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. Most of the old Skunk Works buildings in Burbank were demolished in the late 1990s to make room for parking lots. ", "Al Capp Replies to Critic of Newspaper Comic Strips;", "Li'l Abner Lost In Hollywood by Michael H. Price", "Gov. Though lightning-fast, the Blackbird was not invisible. 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. When Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to tie the knot, it was a major media event. 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. She had married the inconsequential Pappy Yokum in 1902; they produced two strapping sons twice their own size. Sign up here. The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. Salomey: The Yokums' beloved pet pig. [1] Lockheed took over the building but the sour smell of bourbon mash lingered, partly because the group of buildings continued to store barrels of aging whiskey. The "Skonk Works" in Li'l Abner referred to a secretive brewery located in a forest, where a foul-smelling beverage was brewed from skunks. In 1955, the Skunk Works received a contract from the CIA to build a spyplane known as the U-2 with the intention of flying over the Soviet Union and photographing sites of strategic interest. When the Army Air Forces officially asked for a range extension solution it was ready. The name was taken from the moonshine factory in the satirical American comic strip, Li'l Abner. President Eisenhower needed something quicker, stronger, and more elusive. Known locations include United States Air Force Plant 42 and United States Air Force Plant 4. Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". Within three years Abner's circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.[52]. As a result, the XP-38 was the first 400mph fighter in the world. Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. 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. In 1988 and 1989 many newspapers ran reruns of Li'l Abner episodes, mostly from the 1940s run, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association and Capp Enterprises. As the development was very secret, the employees were told to be careful even with how they answered phone calls. Privacy Terms of Use EU and UK Data Protection Notice Cookies. 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. 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. Even the trademark comic "signs" that clutter the backgrounds of Will Elder's panels had a precedent in Li'l Abner, in the residence of Dogpatch entrepreneur Available Jones, though they're also reminiscent of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover. In the midst of the Great Depression, the hardscrabble residents of lowly Dogpatch allowed suffering Americans to laugh at yokels even worse off than themselves. Skunk Works engineers subsequently developed the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, and F-35 Lightning II, the latter being used in the air forces of several countries. Join 110,000 readers each month and get the latest news and entertainment from the world of general aviation direct to your inbox, daily. The name stuck. Shortly after, the go-ahead was given for Lockheed to start developing the United States' first jet fighter. 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. Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. In mid-1939[12] when Lockheed was expanding rapidly, the YP-38 project was moved a few blocks away to the newly purchased 3G Distillery, also known as Three G or GGG Distillery. 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). Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. The story is explained as well in the Wikipedia: " [] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. 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. Sworn to secrecy, they went by the code name Skunk Works (named in jest after Lil'Abner's "Skonk Works" forest, where musty and rank concoctions were brewed). Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist to break the gender barrier when the NCS finally permitted female members in 1950. Lockheed Martin claimed the company registered the domain in order to disrupt its business and that consumer confusion might result. "[15][16][17], At the request of the comic strip copyright holders, Lockheed changed the name of the advanced development company to "Skunk Works" in the 1960s. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a total readership exceeding 60,000,000. Li'l Abner Yokum was a hillbilly who lived in Dogpatch somewhere in the mountains. Our Inspiration. "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. [49], Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. 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"). Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. Kellys 14 Rules and Practices" are still in use today as evidenced by our small, empowered teams, streamlined processes and culture that values attempting to do things that havent been done before. Today's column maps the scope of change. The formal contract for the XP-80 did not arrive at Lockheed until October 16, 1943; some four months after work had already begun. 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. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Famous quotes containing the words supporting, characters and/or villains: " It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. 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. Capp suggests November 26, and Daisy rewarded him with a kiss. For the game featuring the. The term shmoo has also entered the lexicon used in defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than four separate fields of science. Our Services. Email the City of Schertz. 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. Skonk Works evolved into Skunk Works and is now a registered trademark of the company: Skunk Works. "A wish is a wish," says the genie. The local children were read harrowing tales from "Ice-sop's Fables", which were parodies of classic Aesop Fables, but with a darkly sardonic bent (and titles like "Coldilocks and the Three Bares"). Schertz, Texas 78154. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!! [53] According to Tom Roberts, author of Alex Raymond: His Life and Art (2007), Capp authored a stirring monologue that was instrumental in changing the restrictive rules the following year. In the comic strip Li'l Abner, the "Skonk Works" makes oil from the ground up dead skunks for some unknown . A rapidly growing German jet threat gave Lockheed an opportunity to develop an airframe around the most powerful jet engine that the allied forces had access to, the British Goblin. This aircraft first flew in 1966 and remained in service until 1998. In late 1959, Skunk Works received a contract to build five A-12 aircraft at a cost of $96 million. The manned A-12 and the drone were designated as M-21 and D-21 or "Mother" and "Daughter." 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. Li'l Abner never sold as a TV series despite several attempts (including an unsold pilot that aired once on NBC on September 5, 1967),[71] but Al Capp was a familiar face on television for twenty years. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, Capp's "hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. He was a fan of the Lil' Abner comic strip. [1][2][3] The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935.