li'l abner skunk works li'l abner skunk works

The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. 1 (19341936). Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. Maverick Mach 10 - As Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell reaches Mach 10 in the Darkstara piloted jet powered by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Workscheck out the Lockheed Martin Skunk logo on the tail of the plane in the movie .. The F-117 Nighthawk was developed in response to theurgent national needfor a jet fighter that could operate completely undetected by the enemy. 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. 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. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2km2) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas. Customer Care. His philosophy is spelled out in his 14 Rules and Practices. 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. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven fewer than was required.[4]. One day, when the Department of the Navy was trying to reach the Lockheed management for the P-80 project, the call was accidentally transferred to Culvers desk. [14], During the development of the P-80 Shooting Star, Johnson's engineering team was located adjacent to a malodorous plastics factory. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. 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. In the fourth type, according to MacLean, there were only two: Pogo and Li'l Abner. 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. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was immensely popular in the 1940s and '50s. Dogpatch characters pitched consumer products as varied as Grape-Nuts cereal, Kraft caramels, Ivory soap, Oxydol, Duz and Dreft detergents, Fruit of the Loom, Orange Crush, Nestl's cocoa, Cheney neckties, Pedigree pencils, Strunk chainsaws, U.S. Royal tires, Head & Shoulders shampoo and General Electric light bulbs. 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. Wed!! What sets the Skunk Works apart is its unique approach created by founder Kelly Johnson. The staff was cautioned that they had to operate in strict secrecy. I have seen this epithet before, usually in the phrase skunk works, meaning a semi-official project team that is tacitly licensed to bend the rules and think outside the box. 1400 Schertz Parkway. Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little prcieux beside Capp!" In many localities, the tradition continues. 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. Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil becuz it's nicer!" Although ostensibly set in the Kentucky mountains, situations often took the characters to different destinations including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, the South American Amazon, tropical islands, the Moon, Mars, etc. 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. It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953). We develop laser weapon systems, radio frequency and other directed energy technologies for air, ground and sea platforms to provide an affordable countermeasure alternative. Their monetary unit was the "rasbucknik", of which one was worth nothing and a large quantity was worth a lot less, due to the trouble of carrying them around. Sign up here. "It's Jack Jawbreaker!" Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. Though his uncle Tiny was perpetually frozen at 15.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}12 "y'ars" old, Honest Abe gradually grew from infant to grade school age, and became a dead ringer for Washable Jones the star of Capp's early "topper" strip. It first appeared in 1942 and proved so popular that it ran intermittently in Li'l Abner over the next 35 years. Ruled by Good King Nogoodnik (sometimes known as King Stubbornovsky the Last), the Slobbovian politicians were even more corrupt than their Dogpatch counterparts. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. The name stuck. . John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean. Capp has appeared as himself on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Today Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and on This Is Your Life on February 12, 1961, with host Ralph Edwards and honoree Peter Palmer. The Sunday page debuted six months into the run of the strip. To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." There was an engineer working on the XP-80 team named Irv Culver. The name was taken from the moonshine factory in the satirical American comic strip, Li'l Abner. as well as some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's imagination: Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. Beginning in 1944, Li'l Abner was adapted into a series of color theatrical cartoons by Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures, directed by Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham and Howard Swift. Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. All Rights Reserved. A customer would go to the Skunk Works with a request, and on a handshake the project would begin no contracts in place, no official submittal process. "[51] At its peak, the strip was read daily by 70 million Americans (when the U.S. population was only 180 million), with a circulation of more than 900 newspapers in North America and Europe. Slobbovia is an iceberg, which (as real icebergs do) continually capsizes as its lower portions melt. 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 . 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. Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. 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 F-22 is the worlds preeminent air dominance fighter and a proven strategic deterrent. Al Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts. In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.[52]. Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview. "A wish is a wish," says the genie. The smell at the site is credited with being the basis for the Skunk Works name. Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies and charitable or non-profit organizations, spanning several decades. [49], Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Al Capp ended his comic strip with the final gesture of setting a date for Sadie Hawkins Day. Join 110,000 readers each month and get the latest news and entertainment from the world of general aviation direct to your inbox, daily. 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. FactSnippet No. From then on, he referred to it as Dogpatch, USA, and did not give any specific location as to exactly where it was supposed to be located. Li'l Abner's success also sparked a handful of comic strip imitators. The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) 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. Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip LiL Abnerwas formed by Johnson to build Americas first jet fighter. Culver answered the phone in his trademark fashion of the time, by picking up the phone and stating "Skonk Works, inside man Culver". Durward Kirby was the announcer. After a series of successful test flights beginning in 1977, the Air force awarded Skunk Works the contract to build the F-117 stealth fighter on November 1, 1978. The NCS had originally disallowed female members into its ranks. Written and drawn by Al Capp (1909-1979), the strip ran for 43 years - from August 13, 1934, through November 13, 1977. 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. Like Mammy Yokum and the other "wimmenfolk" in Dogpatch, Daisy Mae did all the work, domestic and otherwise while the menfolk generally did nothing whatsoever. (Titanium supply was largely dominated by the Soviet Union, so the CIA set up a dummy corporation to acquire source material.) By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. Most of the old Skunk Works buildings in Burbank were demolished in the late 1990s to make room for parking lots. Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) Mind Works is dedicated to excellence in psychology and counseling. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. [69][70] Starring Peter Palmer, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens, Stubby Kaye, Billie Hayes, Howard St. John, Joe E. Marks, Carmen Alvarez, William Lanteau and Bern Hoffman, with cameos by Jerry Lewis, Robert Strauss, Ted Thurston, Alan Carney, Valerie Harper and Donna Douglas. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a total readership exceeding 60,000,000. [27] The impervious Fosdick considered the gaping, smoking holes "mere scratches", however, and always reported back in one piece to his corrupt superior "The Chief" for duty the next day. [4] It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and, later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. 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. Kitchen is currently[when?] 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). 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. [18] The company also holds several registrations of it with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Our Inspiration. An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. [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). In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. [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). I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad Magazine. He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. 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. Honest Abe Yokum: Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's little boy was born in 1953 "after a pregnancy that ambled on so long that readers began sending me medical books", wrote Capp. 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. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. Li'l Abner Gets a Job Part 2, script and art by Al Capp; Abner takes a job at the skunk works. "Capp had always advocated a more activist agenda for the Society, and he had begun in December 1949 to make his case in the Newsletter as well as at the meetings," wrote comics historian R. C. Most Dogpatchers were shiftless and ignorant; the remainder were scoundrels and thieves. City Building Map An attack aircraft that rendered itself invisible to enemy radar. When the starving and broke Capp first sold Li'l Abner in 1934, he gladly accepted the syndicate's standard onerous contract. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the toxic fumes of the . In his seminal book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan considered Li'l Abner's Dogpatch "a paradigm of the human situation". Supposedly done in retaliation for Capp's "Mary Worm" parody in Li'l Abner (1956), a media-fed "feud" commenced briefly between the rival strips. When the Army Air Forces officially asked for a range extension solution it was ready. [29] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. The first overflight took place on July 4 1956. The name was adapted by the Lockheed Corporation, the predecessor of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, more than 50 years ago. 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. Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist to break the gender barrier when the NCS finally permitted female members in 1950. [9], In 2009, the Skunk Works was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The trophy is awarded annually by the National Aeronautic Association for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year. "He had the touch," Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. Oh hell, it's like a fighter retiring. The Skunk Worksis the proud home of eight Collier Trophies. We develop laser weapon systems, radio frequency and other directed energy technologies for air, ground and sea platforms to provide an affordable countermeasure alternative. The designation 'skunk works' or 'skunkworks' is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects. A Mach-3 aircraft that could fly continuously for hours on end and literally outrun missiles. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. 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." Mobsters and criminal-types invariably spoke slangy Brooklynese, and residents of Lower Slobbovia spoke pidgin-Russian, with a smattering of Yinglish. Both the Trump and Panic parodies were drawn by EC legend, Will Elder. He challenged the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation and hindered progress. The local geography was fluid and vividly complex; Capp continually changed it to suit either his whims or the current storyline. 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. During the late 1990s when designing Pixar's building, Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs visited a Skunkworks Building which influenced Steve's design. He left it at Dogpatch USA so there would be no headaches and problems. Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. After his lower wisdom teeth grew so long that they squeezed his cerebral Goodness Gland and emerged as forehead horns, he proved himself capable of evil. The phrase, used then as an informal nickname, comes from " Skonk Works" the Kickapoo Joy Juice bootleg brewing operation in Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip. Today's column maps the scope of change. replied the voice at the other end. [12] Pursued by local lovelies Hopeful Mudd and Boyless Bailey, Tiny was even dumber and more awkward than Abner, if that can be imagined. 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. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp's hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was popular in the 1940s and '50s. This project marked the birth of what would become the Skunk Works, with founder Kelly Johnson at its helm. Li'l Abner Yokum was a hillbilly who lived in Dogpatch somewhere in the mountains. There was not much industry in Dogpatch. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. [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. 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. 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. I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. The first topper was Washable Jones, a weekly continuity about a four-year-old hillbilly boy who goes fishing and accidentally hooks a ghost, which he pulls from the water. Publicity campaigns were devised to boost circulation and increase public visibility of Li'l Abner, often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. Using sheets of titanium coated with heat-dissipating black paint, engineers created the SR-71 Blackbird. Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . 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. Over the years, the Skunk Works division in Palmdale, California, was given a more official moniker, Lockheeds Advanced Development Programs, but its mission remained unchanged: build the worlds most experimental aircraft and breakthrough technologies in abject secrecy at a pace impossible to rival. [54] Li'l Abner was also parodied in 1954 (as "Li'l Melvin" by "Ol' Hatt") in the pages of EC Comics' humor comic, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein.