Kentucky it was!

[Sam Clements]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael McKernan" <mckernan at LOCALNET.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 10:49 PM
Subject: Kentucky it was!


>> Thanks to everyone who's chimed in on this, I stand corrected.
>
> Capp did refer to 'Dogpatch, Kentucky', in a dialogue box at the beginning
> of day '9' in 1934 (the strip began running in August, but I'm not sure if
> this represents August 9, since the numbers seem to be consecutive--i.e.,
> no breaks for Sundays).
>
> This strip can be found on the top of page 17 of Vol. 1 of Kitchen's
> reprints (1934-5).
>
>
> Also, in 1937, Capp did a promotional book through his United Features
> Syndicate, which offered a comic strip format 'origin story' for Li'l
> Abner, which shows himself as an unhandsome prototype of Li'l Abner,
> hitchhiking on a 'walking trip through the Kentucky Mountains' and he then
> depicts the 'hillbilly people there, the prototypes of Li'l Abner...'
>
> This trip is supposedly at least a partially-true story; it happened when
> he was 15, rather than the paunchy, roughly unshaven hobo-like adult as he
> portrays himself in this comic strip version.  The actual Li'l Abner strip
> drawings weren't begun until years later, when he was in NYC.
>
> I have to agree with what Kitchen says about being generic afterward (for
> whatever reasons).  Capp's original circulation was something like just 8
> newspapers, so he probably figured he'd not get caught in that early
> slip-up of specifying KY.
>
> Thanks again.  I'm glad I've finally gotten that straight!
>
> Michael McKernan, Ph.D.
>

In a June, 1936 strip, Capp has a character pull a "county directory" at
random, and it is titled "Dogpatch County, Kentucky"

Sam Clements