# Does anybody remember Dondi? I don't. And other strips I barely remember.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 9, 2004, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310 "2004-10-09T01:43:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/61 "2004-10-12T00:33:22Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> Sounds like you’re conflating Capp with Ham Fisher. Capp worked for Fisher on **Joe Palooka** and wrote an article that blasted Fisher for his habit of hiring young artists and paying them nothing…
Respectfully, no. I read about the incident in one of Frank Frazetta’s recent hardback art collections – “Icon,” IIRC. Frazetta apparently worked for Capp for several years, and Frazetta relates the incident (as well as reprinting a “Li’l Abner” strip he did for Capp).
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/62 "2004-10-12T00:51:27Z")
The Al Capp story is a confusing one. I almost included a bio when I did a Staff Report a few years back, about [the origin of the Sadie Hawkins dance](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msadiehawkins.html) However, the information was conflicting and confusing – when we’ve got people altering the strips to try to accuse Capp of pornography, it’s hard to know what was true.
Kitchen Sink press put out about 30 volumes of Li’l Abner dailies a few years back, and then went bankrupt (I think) – anyhow, they stopped publishing them, alas. They weren’t cheap. There are a few single-volume special editions, there’s one about Shmoos, for instance.
A lot of the Walt Kelly strips are available in books and occasional reprints. Fantagraphics started reprinting the daily Pogo strips a few years ago, got out about 11 volumes and then stopped (although they’re claiming they’ll start up again.) Meanwhile, a great introduction is the hard-cover TEN EVER LOVIN’ BLUE EYED YEARS WITH POGO, if you can find it used somewhere…
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### Author:  [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/63 "2004-10-12T01:25:14Z")
I remember _The Phantom_ and _Mandrake the Magician_. I think they were done by the same person.
I also remember reading _Alley Oop_ about a caveman (Alley Oop) and a scientist with a time machine (Doc Wanmug? Something like that.)
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/64 "2004-10-12T01:48:13Z")
What about [Barney Google](http://www.toonopedia.com/google.htm)? Anybody remember him?
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### Author:  [@Hometownboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hometownboy)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/65 "2004-10-12T06:06:17Z")
> [@tanstaafl](#):
>
> I remember _The Phantom_ and _Mandrake the Magician_. I think they were done by the same person.
>
> I also remember reading _Alley Oop_ about a caveman (Alley Oop) and a scientist with a time machine (Doc Wanmug? Something like that.)
Alley Oop is still around - among other papers it appears in the daily in north central Oregon where I work. I had the pleasure of interviewing the late Dave Graue a few years back, who took over the strip after creator V.T. Hamlin left. Last year I had the pleasure of doing the same with his successors, Jack and Carole Bender. We’re talking about incredibly nice people, willing to spend an hour on the phone with our fairly small circulation paper. Both also sent original art to me after the interview. We believe we may be the only paper in the country that’s published Alley Oop continuously since its inception on Aug. 7, 1933. The story with the Benders was for the 70th anniversary of the strip last year.
for more info, check out[This Alley Oop website](http://home.comcast.net/~cjh5801/Alley.htm).
By the way, after I ran the first article, our company president clued me that Professor Wonmug’s name was a spoof of Einstein (Ein stein = one mug). That one had sailed past me for decades.
And for Smokey Stover fans, on of my dad’s favorite quotes from the strip was “Scram gravy ain’t wavy.” Don’t know what it meant, either, but I liked the rhythm.
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### Author:  [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/66 "2004-10-12T06:23:35Z")
Regarding some questions about Li’l Abner & Al Capp:
> [@](#):
>
> One favorite theme revolved around the dogged determination of the typical Dogpatch woman to snatch a man. In 1937, Capp gave the women a day set aside for them to chase and hunt down their prey. Sadie Hawkins Day became an unofficial national holiday in real life, as hundreds of college campuses celebrated it.
> [@](#):
>
> The professional feud portrayed in Li’l Abner concerned Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka. Capp assisted Fisher for a brief time in the early 1930s, during which he introduced a hillbilly character, Big Leviticus, to the boxing strip. When Capp left to start Li’l Abner, Fisher was furious and yearly thereafter, he reprinted pages of the Big Leviticus sequence to remind readers that a hillbilly was in Joe Palooka first. Capp countered by regularly caricaturing Fisher in Li’l Abner as a cartoonist who had others do his work for him, usually artists shown hidden in closets slaving for a dollar a day. The feud was devastatingly brutal, resulting in lawsuits and professional censure before Fisher’s suicide in 1955.
Both quotes courtesy: 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics, edited by Maurice Horn. This is a nice coffee table book, too. Many illustrations of long forgotten comics.
Still working on my Pogo collection-true Pogophiles would enjoy ‘Outrageously Pogo’, including early work by Kelly, Pogo in various ad campaigns, Pogo Christmas carols, and the complete strip for 1951.
Lee Falk is the common link between Mandrake the Magician (Lee Falk and Phil Davis) and The Phantom (Lee Falk and Ray Moore). In both cases, Falk handled primarily the writing, while the latter men addressed the artwork.
Personally, I don’t recall Barney Google with the same clarity as Snuffy Smith.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/67 "2004-10-12T13:43:34Z")
It doesn’t look like anyone has mentioned “The Katzenjammer Kids”. The faux German and general mayhem in the strip was…odd.
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### Author:  [@Mullinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mullinator)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/68 "2004-10-12T15:00:14Z")
How about **Thatch**? An [example can be found here](http://hbd.org/pbabcock/thatch/thatch.html).
It struck me as a potential successor to the Doonesbury/Bloom County family tree of topical political and social humor from a younger perspectice. Sadly, the author ended the strip relatively quickly to take a job as a Clinton speechwrite. I always hoped that the strip would reappear once Clinton was out of office.
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### Author:  [@lachesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lachesis)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2004, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-remember-dondi-i-dont-and-other-strips-i-barely-remember/268310/69 "2004-10-12T18:42:12Z")
well, since you’ve opened this history-fest, i’ll go down to the Jurassic level …
Mandrake the Magician (self explanatory, i should think)
Bringing Up Father (which i might have confused, or could have mutated into Jiggs and Maggie. flying rolling pins/books/whatnot aimed at husband’s head is an ongoing feature.)
The Strange World of Mister Mum (a perpetually non-verbal single framer)
…
and yes, i remember Smokey Stover, Gasoline Alley, Nancy, The Phantom, Pogo, Dondi, L’il Abner, and many others already mentioned. however, i am NOT old enough to have read originals of Little Nemo in Dreamland or The Yellow Kid!
anyone else recall serializations of Disney movies like That Darned Cat? or how about The Jackson Twins?
on preview, i see someone else mentions Mandrake. darn screens flubbing the entries.
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