Wednesday, June 19, 2019

It's Not Legal!

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Fearless Fossdick was one of the most ingenious creations of Al Capp. Billed as Li'l Abner's gavorite comic strip character, it was in fact a parody of Dick Tracy, that took over the strip for whole stretches at the time. Fossdick also had his own strip, a series of one tier ad gags for Wildroot hair tonic. It's as wild as anything Capp (and his associates) would make. You can see how Capps's humor influenced even the young Harvey Kurtzman, who did similar parodies and gags in his own creation, Mad.

I don't know how many of these strips were made, but you see them all through the fifties in newspapers and magazines. I got a couple that I was able to scan myself, the rest come from online microfiche sources (and are a but more grey). No one has ever made a ,ist of them, so consider this a start.

No comments: