Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, Vol. 1: 1954-1955 [Hardcover]

Frank Frazetta (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2003

Before legendary artist Frank Frazetta became an American institution for his lush paintings, 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 to 1961 Frazetta toiled as a ghost for Al Capp, the most famous and successful cartoonist of his era. Volume 1 (of four) features The Bald Iggle (from Capp's Shmoo-and-Kigmy school of creatures with social messages), Loverboynik (a thinly disguised Liberace), and Milton the Masked Martian (an early super-hero parody) 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!

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (September 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569719594
• ISBN-13: 978-1569719596
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #643,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly amoosing, November 17, 2003

By 

Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, Vol. 1: 1954-1955 (Hardcover)

These are Sunday Li'l Abner pages, penciled by comics legend Frank Frazetta. In my opinion, Li'l Abner was the greatest comic stip of all time. The strip was fantastic during the 1950s, so you can't go wrong here. It seems like this was released because of the Frazetta connection, but the art looks pretty much like all other Li'l Abner art. Frazetta was clearly drawing as close as he could to Al Capp's style. But any excuse to have Li'l Abner strips released works for me. Highly recommended.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious stories, so-so reproductions, September 28, 2003

By 

n0s4a2 (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, Vol. 1: 1954-1955 (Hardcover)

When I first opened this book I was disappointed that instead of reproductions of the original art, I was seeing photos of printed newspaper pages, which creates a somewhat degraded image, with the ben day dots smudging together in blotchy patterns, the ink lines losing much of their delicacy, and the light/dark composition being thrown off. Newspaper printing in the '50s wasn't that crisp to begin with, but obviously this was what was available, and so if we are to enjoy these great comics today, it will have to do. All in all, it is legible (about as good as a quality color xerox from a newspaper), and it's a wonder that these pages of the NY Sunday Mirror were saved at all in such good shape.

The stories are absolutely all-time world-class, the drawings are superb and Lil Abner is one of the most memorable comic strips the form has ever produced. There is also a nice explanation of Al Capp's relationship to Frazetta, and an interesting B/W reproduction of Frazetta's artwork for a parody of the motorcycle flick, "The Wild Ones", which drew complaints that it was not consistent with the look of the strip (they were right; the book states that afterward Frazetta did not ink his own drawings).

I laughed out loud at almost every story. They are real gems.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Material Puts Modern Comics To Shame!, September 10, 2003

By 

Mike Fontanelli (Sherman Oaks, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, Vol. 1: 1954-1955 (Hardcover)

Finally! Although one may quibble over some technical details ( the strips might have been printed a bit larger, and the color is a bit muddy in spots, ) there's no denying that publisher Denis Kitchen is performing a service to mankind by making these historic strips available again - for the first time in almost 50 years.

Al Capp was at a creative peak in the 1950's, the heyday of his uber cool American satiric masterpiece: LI'L ABNER, and these classic Sunday page sequences don't disappoint. For many people, this was their first exposure to Frank Frazetta's work, and he managed to capture Capp's idiosyncratic style with the greatest of ease, adding many brilliant, characteristic nuances of his own along the way.

With the demise of the late, lamented Kitchen Sink Press a few years back, I despaired of ever seeing this classic material back in print again - but here it is! It's impossible for gen X-ers weaned on tripe like Dilbert and Foxtrot to even begin to imagine what a rich source of art and humor the American comic strip used to be in the 30's, 40's and 50's.

For anyone interested in re-visiting a Golden Age of this uniquely American art form, you couldn't ask for a better place to start than this. Hopefully the series will be continued before and beyond the Frazetta years - into the forties and sixties. And while we're at it, how about a color POGO Sundays collection, Mr. Kitchen?