Al Capps Complete Shmoo: The Comic Books

The SHMOO comic books were a merchandising spin-off of the Shmoo craze of the late 40's.Al Capp's brother was instrumental in publishing these comics, though other than featuringa character introduced in Li'l Abner, Al Capp himself had no part of the creation of these comics.They were done by hired staff, they do not feature Li'l Abner characters (except for Washable Jones,who seems different from his 30's incarnation, but who's an entertaining viewpoint character), andthey are written and drawn in a style meant for children. The ones featuring Super-Shmoo rely largelyon unfunny verbal puns with the term "Shmoo" and are not very good.So why four stars? Well, this is a beautiful package, the non-Super Shmoo stories are funny in acartoon sense, and Dogpatch IS featured as the setting in most stories.Also, the book has been remaindered and you can get it for under $10.For under $10, it's a four-star purchase for anyone who liked Capp's SHMOO pieces in Li'l Abner.This totally lacks the social criticism and sarcastic wit of Li'l Abner, but it's nice toown beautifully transferred copies of the original comic books, and if you can accept theseas children's comics, on the level of Casper comics, they can be entertaining.For $20, I'd give this three stars, for $30 2 1/2 stars.

Book is beautiful and well made. I feel like there are a couple of better comics that I have read than what are in this book but all in all it is a great introduction to Shmoo. It has funny advertisements between books too. I am very pleased to have this in my collection.

In 1948, Al Capp introduced the Shmoos into the Li'l Abner comic strip. These adorable creatures became hugely popular across the United States. There were hundreds of different Shmoo products manufactured during the fad. One of the products was a Shmoo comic book, all five issues of which are reprinted here. Capp himself didn't write or draw the comic books; he delegated that task to his assistants. Capp didn't want the main Li'l Abner characters to appear in the Shmoo comics, so a very minor character named Washable Jones was the Shmoos' human co-star. Most of the stories feature Washable Jones and the Shmoos helping out their fellow hillbillies. There was also a feature called "Super Shmoo", which was ostensibly a parody of Superman, but was mostly an excuse to make lousy "Shmoo" related puns. Technically, these comics aren't very good, but they do have a certain charm to them.

The comic books of Al Capp's Shmoo. Nice. If your not a completist on this...you can pass.

It is not entirely clear in the book description above that the source material is not Capp's Li'l Abner. In fact, this book is a reprint of a series of Shmoo comic books created by Capp's publishing company to capitalize on the public's obsessive demand for Shmoo material that arose after Capp introduced the creatures in the strip Li'l Abner in 1948.These comics, written and inked by junior artists outside of Capp's immediate studio, don't even remotely approach the quality -- in story lines or drawings -- of Li'l Abner. In fact, as the publisher notes in the introduction, "The series is barely average fare even by the relatively low comic book standards of the time."I concur with this assessment; the drawings are dull and the story lines are awful, often suggesting the energy an elementary schooler might bring to a dull creative writing assignment. Fans of Li'l Abner expecting Capp's frenetic drawing style and intricate, subversive plots will be disappointed. One might ask why these comics were reprinted at all; perhaps to help fund a forthcoming second edition of Shmoo material drawn from the original Li'l Abner sources?Regardless of the publisher's motivation, Shmoo and Capp fans are advised to pass on this book in favor of either the second Complete Shmoo volume (when it arrives) or Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, the only collection of Capp's work still widely available.

The Shmoo was a weird animal from Lil' Abner comics. An animal that spontaneously reproduces, lays eggs, milk, and butter and doesn't mind being eaten. Seeing as how the younger generation has forgotten the parent comic, it would be a decent assumption that the Shmoo has faded from the zeitgeist as well. Strange as it may seem Shmoo mania hit the United States for a time. The animal certainly helped to make its creator, AL Capp, a millionaire.This collects the complete run of Shmoo comics, 1-5, from 1949 and a Procter and Gamble insert using the characters. The best part of this comic are the old time advertisements for Shmoo gear and the annotations by Dennis Kitchen. This series certainly didn't put its best foot forward, most of the stories are pretty bad even for the children's fare for the time. Plus the mainstay characters from Lil Abner were banned from the comic, so readers had to make do with a second-string entity named Washable Jones, resurrected from the strip early days. Perhaps they should have begun with the Lil Abner strips and moved onto this series second.

As an Al Capp fan who bought and read all the Kitchen Sink reprints of the original newspaper Li'l Abners, I had hoped that this volume would satisfy my demand for more. As mentioned already, the publisher admits that this is not what you'd call quality. After an especially dumb story about "Super-Shmoo", replete with puns based on the word "shmoo", I closed it for good. I hope beginning readers at the local library, where I donated this waste of time and money, find it amusing. If you enjoyed George Lucas's "Howard the Duck" adaptation, this may be for you.

Gli Shmoo sono dei simpaticissimi personaggi di contorno che Al Capp creò nel 1948 all'interno della sua striscia a fumetti "Li'l Abner".I personaggi ebbero così successo che "uscirono" dalla striscia dei giornali per avere una serie a fumetti tutta loro!Il volume, cartonato con sovraccopertina, ristampa tutte queste storie, con alcuni interessanti approfondimenti realizzati da uno dei più grandi esperti di Al Capp, Denis Kitchen.