The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skunk_Works&oldid=1140117891, Lockheed Martin-associated military facilities, Research organizations in the United States, Research and development in the United States, Buildings and structures in Burbank, California, Buildings and structures in Palmdale, California, Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 14:51. 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. [46][47] According to the Boston Globe (as reported on May 18, 2010), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum. All Rights Reserved. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. [29] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. People magazine ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free New York Times devoted nearly a full page to the event," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. For the game featuring the. It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified R&D programs, and exotic aircraft platforms. You wanna argue about it? Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades. 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. During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, comic book adaptations, public service material and other specialty work in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. The U-2 was tested at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert, and the Flight Test Engineer in charge was Joseph F. Ware, Jr. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. 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. A total of six Collier trophies, the most prestigious award in the aeronautics industry, have been collected by the Skunk Works division since 1943, but its quite possible the divisions most impressive legacy has yet to be written. Kelly Johnson set them apart from the rest of the factory in a walled-off section of one building, off limits to all but those involved directly. or even Little Annie Fanny. [13] The first YP-38 was built there before the team moved back to Lockheed's main factory a year later. This vital reconnaissance, unobtainable by other means, averted a war in Europe and a nuclear crisis in Cuba. 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. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. The logo, which features a skunk standing on its hind feet with its front legs folded on his chest and smiling confidently, has generated some confusion for generations born well after LilAbner was pulled from the comic pages. They have filed several challenges against registrants of domain names containing variations on the term under anti-cybersquatting policies, and have lost a case under the .uk domain name dispute resolution service against a company selling cannabis seeds and paraphernalia, which used the word "skunkworks" in its domain name (referring to "Skunk", a variety of the cannabis plant). The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. One day, Culver's phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking." According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the toxic fumes of the concentrated "skonk oil", which was brewed and barreled daily by "Big Barnsmell" (known as the lonely "inside man" at the Skonk Works), by grinding dead skunks and worn shoes into a smoldering still, for some mysterious, unspecified purpose. The Skunk Worksis the proud home of eight Collier Trophies. (In his book The American Language, H.L. He also had notoriously bad aim often leaving a trail of collateral damage (in the form of bullet-riddled pedestrians) in his wake. With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. By 1973, Pentagon officials were calling for the creation of an attack aircraft that could fly undetected past enemy radar. Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the toxic fumes of the . Other fictional locales included Skonk Hollow, El Passionato, Kigmyland, the Republic of Crumbumbo, Lo Kunning, Faminostan, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, Pineapple Junction and, most notably, the Valley of the Shmoon. Lockheed was chosen to develop the jet because of its past interest in jet development and its previous contracts with the Air Force. By 1952, the event was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 known venues. Awakening, he exclaims the phrase. Terrifically long hours. Many have commented on the shift in Capp's political viewpoint, from as liberal as Pogo in his early years to as conservative as Little Orphan Annie when he reached middle age. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a total readership exceeding 60,000,000. The phrase "skunk works" originated from the aeronautics industry, and in that context it had a specific meaning (and still does). Skunk Works history started with the P-38 Lightning in 1939[1][2] and the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Our Inspiration. Others include double whammy, skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Email the City of Schertz. Al Capp once told one of his assistants that he knew Li'l Abner had finally "arrived" when it was first pirated as a pornographic Tijuana bible parody in the mid-1930s. FactSnippet No. There was not much industry in Dogpatch. Shortly after, the go-ahead was given for Lockheed to start developing the United States' first jet fighter. He also briefly filled-in for radio journalist Drew Pearson, participated in a March 2, 1948 America's Town Meeting of the Air debate on ABC, and hosted his own syndicated, 500-station radio show.). Our Multi-Domain Operations/Joint All-Domain Operations solutions provide a complete picture of the battlespace and empowers warfighters to quickly make decisions that drive action. Al Capp also wrote two other daily comic strips:[4]. Like the Coconino County depicted in George Herriman's Krazy Kat and the Okefenokee Swamp of Walt Kelly's Pogo, and, most recently and famously, The Simpsons' "Springfield", Dogpatch's distinctive cartoon landscape became as identified with the strip as any of its characters. "It's Jack Jawbreaker!" [50], Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly", schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. In addition, Capp was a frequent celebrity guest. We develop laser weapon systems, radio frequency and other directed energy technologies for air, ground and sea platforms to provide an affordable countermeasure alternative. A Mach-3 aircraft that could fly continuously for hours on end and literally outrun missiles. 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. 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 NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. one-page Sally and the Gang story. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. His philosophy is spelled out in his 14 Rules and Practices. 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. Jasper Jooks by Jess "Baldy" Benton (1948'49), Ozark Ike (1945'53) and Cotton Woods (1955'58), both by Ray Gotto, were clearly inspired by Capp's strip. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. ", "Wal, fry mah hide!" Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. ", Daisy Mae Yokum (ne Scragg): Beautiful Daisy Mae's character was hopelessly in love with Dogpatch's most prominent resident throughout the entire 43-year run of Al Capp's comic strip. 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. Kitchen is currently[when?] 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). There have been many stories over the years about the names origin: It evolved from a comic strip or the color of a tent it was housed in or because what was inside that tent smelled so bad. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. Slobbovia is an iceberg, which (as real icebergs do) continually capsizes as its lower portions melt. [7] In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip "ideel", Fearless Fosdick. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. It was a commentary on human nature itself. Schertz, Texas 78154. 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. 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. 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. Humorously enough, many states tried to claim ownership to the little town (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. Contest (1951), the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964) and many others. It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994. City Building Map Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. Li'l Abner Yokum: Abner's character was 6feet 3inches (1.91m) tall and perpetually 19 years old. Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. [18] The company also holds several registrations of it with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Ben Rich and "Kelly" Johnson set the origin as June 1943 in Burbank, California; they relate essentially the same chronology in their autobiographies. [1][2] In 1964, Johnson told Look magazine that the bourbon distillery was the first of five Lockheed skunk works locations. 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. Ironing Pappy's trousers fell under her wifely duties as well, although she didn't bother with preliminaries like waiting for Pappy to remove them first. [64] The character was voiced by Frank Graham.[65]. In his essay "The Decline of the Comics", (Canadian Forum, January 1954) literary critic Hugh MacLean classified American comic strips into four types: daily gag, adventure, soap opera, and "an almost lost comic ideal: the disinterested comment on life's pattern and meaning." was the reply Ralph Kramden told his wife Alice (concerning a comment made by Ralph's mother in-law) in Episode #2, Al Capp designed the 23-foot-high (7.0m) statue of Josiah Flintabattey Flonatin ("Flinty") that graces the city of, "Natcherly", Capp's bastardization of "naturally", turns up occasionally in popular culture even without a specifically rural theme. After this, Capp simply expanded Li'l Abner by another row, and filled the rest of the space with a page-wide title panel and a small panel called Advice fo' Chillun. 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. The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). January 8, 2021 What is Skunk Works? [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. Abner and Daisy Mae's nuptials were a major source of media attention, landing them on the aforementioned cover of Life magazine's March 31, 1952, issue. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip Mary Worth by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. 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. The manned A-12 and the drone were designated as M-21 and D-21 or "Mother" and "Daughter." During the late 1990s when designing Pixar's building, Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs visited a Skunkworks Building which influenced Steve's design. 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. 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. Within three years Abner's circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. But high altitude was not enough. Its name was taken from the moonshine factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner . By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. She had married the inconsequential Pappy Yokum in 1902; they produced two strapping sons twice their own size. 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. Gary Herbert says 'tone' of fundraising will change amid criticism", "Dogpatch Confidential" by Dennis Drabelle (, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Li%27l_Abner&oldid=1141466385, Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in, "Ef Ah had mah druthers, Ah'd druther", "As any fool kin plainly see!" Kelly Johnson's elite engineering group was originally housed in a rented circus tent adjacent to a smelly plastics factory. The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. Mammy solved the problem with a tooth extraction and ended the episode with her most famous dictum. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. Known locations include United States Air Force Plant 42 and United States Air Force Plant 4. In the comic, there was a hidden place deep in the woods called the "skonk works" which was where they brewed a strong alcoholic beverage. 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. Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a new life-sized mural commemorating his 100th birthday, displayed in downtown Amesbury, Massachusetts. To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. 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. [citation needed] In one post-World War II storyline, Abner became a US Air Force bodyguard of Steve Cantor (a parody of Steve Canyon) against the evil bald female spy Jewell Brynner (a parody of actor Yul Brynner). Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. 1400 Schertz Parkway. [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). "Daisy Mae" redirects here. When Capp created the event, it wasn't his intention to have it occur annually on a specific date, because it inhibited his freewheeling plotting. skunk works [] Al CappLi'l AbnerKickapoo Joy JuiceSkonk Works This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the formera classic example of a literal revolution. President Eisenhower needed something quicker, stronger, and more elusive. Culver later said at an interview conducted in 1993 that "when Kelly Johnson heard about the incident, he promptly fired me. 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. 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). He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? Wed!! In the fourth type, according to MacLean, there were only two: Pogo and Li'l Abner. Unusual looking and aerodynamically challenged, the Nighthawk wasnt pretty, but it did what no aircraft had done before. [1][2][3] The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935. From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. [6] The range modifications were performed in Lockheed's Building 304, starting with 100 P-38F models on April 15, 1942. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision.