[4] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. We have invested in developing and demonstrating hypersonic technology for over 30 years. 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. A derivative hillbilly feature called Looie Lazybones, an out-and-out imitation (drawn by a young Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's Thrilling Comics in the late 1940s. To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. Conceptually based on Siberia, or perhaps specifically on Birobidzhan, Capp's icy hellhole made its first appearance in Li'l Abner in April 1946. In many localities, the tradition continues. During World War II, the Abner character was drafted into the role as mascot emblem of the Patrol Boat Squadron 29. The name was taken from the moonshine factory in the satirical American comic strip, Li'l Abner. The original "Skonk Works" was a liquor still where something was always brewing in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. "The Comics on the Couch" by Gerald Clarke, "Gallery of vintage ads featuring Li'l Abner as spokesman", Filmmakers host premiere for Dogpatch USA documentary. When Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to tie the knot, it was a major media event. Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "sassiety" leader and bare knuckle "champeen" of the town of Dogpatch. Since the system entered service with the U.S. Air Force in late 2014, Auto GCAS has been credited with seven saves eight pilots and seven F-16s. The next comic frame says: HIDE FRIED, "Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the, "ABNER" was the name given to the first codebreaking computer used by the, The original Dogpatch is a historical part of San Francisco dating back to the 1860s that escaped the, Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Earthquake McGoon, Lonesome Polecat, Hairless Joe, Sadie Hawkins, Silent Yokum and Fearless Fosdick all found their way onto the, Al Capp always claimed to have effectively created the, Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. [4] It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and, later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? The story is explained as well in the Wikipedia: " [] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. As the development was very secret, the employees were told to be careful even with how they answered phone calls. The F-104 Starfighter, the first Mach 2 aircraft, was developed to compete against Soviet MiGs in the early 1950s. 4 Declassified Facts About Lockheed Martin's Legendary 'Skunk Works' Boody Rogers' Babe was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks with many similarities to Li'l Abner. Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. ", signaled the end of all further discussion. Initially owned and syndicated through United Feature Syndicate, a division of the E.W. Her most familiar phrase, however, is "Good is better than evil becuz it's nicer!" 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. 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. "It's Jack Jawbreaker!" Li'l Abner - Wikipedia After about 40 years, however, Capp's interest in Abner waned, and this showed in the strip itself Li'l Abner lasted until November 13, 1977, when Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to advancing illness. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. He hosted at least five television programs between 1952 and 1972 three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." The name was adapted by the Lockheed Corporation, the predecessor of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, more than 50 years ago. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." But high altitude was not enough. compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp. The D-21 drone, similar in design to the Blackbird, was built to overfly the Lop Nur nuclear test facility in China. The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). [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. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. It was a commentary on human nature itself. 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. 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." But where did the term come from? He challenged the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation and hindered progress. One day, Culver's phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking." Zugang! Pappy Yokum: Born Lucifer Ornamental Yokum, pint-sized Pappy had the misfortune of being the patriarch in a family that didn't have one. Fosdick's duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime, and it's too much to ask any law-enforcement officer to do both, I suppose." I wonder what the derivation is? Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. (In his book The American Language, H.L. A superhuman dynamo, Mammy did all the household chores and provided her charges with no fewer than eight meals a day of "po'k chops" and "tarnips" (as well as local Dogpatch delicacies like "candied catfish eyeballs" and "trashbean soup"). [14], During the development of the P-80 Shooting Star, Johnson's engineering team was located adjacent to a malodorous plastics factory. Everybody almost dead.. Lockheed Martin was awarded this prestigious medal in 2007 for an exceptional record of developing cutting-edge aircraft, technologies, and systems solutions for the U.S. Government. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence. Li'l Abner featured a whole menagerie of allegorical animals over the years each one was designed to satirically showcase another disturbing aspect of human nature. 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. The comic strip had 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. However, Gussman consulted closely with Capp on the storylines. 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. Outside the comic strip, the practical basis of a Sadie Hawkins dance is simply one of gender role-reversal. Outside Dogpatch, characters used a variety of stock Vaudevillian dialects. Kitchen is currently[when?] It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. The name stuck. "Daisy Mae" redirects here. 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. 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. 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. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier in the pages of Li'l Abner. Skunkworks: The Super Secret Program That Built America's Stealth "What?" The name was taken from the moonshine factory in the satirical American comic strip, Li'l Abner. He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. We have invested in developing and demonstrating hypersonic technology for over 30 years. ", 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. The Skunk Worksis the proud home of eight Collier Trophies. The odor put out by Skonk Works was so hideous people avoided the area and the people who worked there. What the Hell is a Skunk Work? The Register 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. In addition, Capp was a frequent celebrity guest. Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. His philosophy is spelled out in his 14 Rules and Practices. 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. Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . It became a woman-empowering rite at high schools and college campuses, long before the modern feminist movement gained prominence. He was portrayed as a naive, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly. Aquatech | Will Sarni on why we need a Skunk Works in water Mary G. Ross, the first Native American female engineer, was among the 40 founding engineers.[8]. During AirVenture 2003, for example, a 4-year-old girl took one look at a picture of an artists drawing of the Lockheed Martin Space plane with the distinctive skunk on the tail and asked if it was a ride at Disneyland because the mascot was obviously Flower from the movie Bambi.. Four operational missions were conducted over China, but the camera packages were never successfully recovered. Li'l Abner - Cast of Characters - Supporting Characters and Villains 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. Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. 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 relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. 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. Skunk Works - Wikiwand The musical has since become a perennial favorite of high school and amateur productions, due to its popular appeal and modest production requirements. Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. His appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) " Philosophy is written in this grand bookI mean . He lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. [30] The favorite dish of the starving natives was raw polar bear (and vice versa). Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from, Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42. What does a Skunk Works do? - Digitopoly Several years later, the U.S. Air Force became interested in the design, and it ordered the SR-71 Blackbird, a two-seater version of the A-12. Li'l Abner: Al Capp, Skunk Works, Dogpatch USA, Shmoo, No one was to discuss the project outside the small organization, and team members were warned to be careful of how they answered the phones. A lifelong chain-smoker, he happily plugged Chesterfield cigarettes; he appeared in Schaeffer fountain pen ads with his friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly; pitched the Famous Artists School (in which he had a financial interest) along with Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Virgil Partch, Willard Mullin and Whitney Darrow, Jr; and, though a professed teetotaler, he personally endorsed Rheingold Beer, among other products. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. The idea was reportedly abandoned in the development stage by the producers, however, for reasons of practicality. Shmoos were originally meant to be included in the 1956 Broadway Li'l Abner musical, employing stage puppetry. 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. It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt. 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 knew how to take an otherwise ordinary drawing and really make it pop. FactSnippet No. Consequently, Salomey is frequently targeted by unscrupulous sportsmen, hog breeders and gourmands (like J.R. Fangsley and Bounder J. Roundheels), as well as unsavory wild boars with improper intentions (such as Boar Scarloff and Porknoy). Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has spoken! This aircraft first flew in 1966 and remained in service until 1998. In his November 5, 1977 strip, Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae make a final visit to Capp, and Daisy insisted the Capp settle on a date. Lil Abner (1947) comic books - MyComicShop Lockheed was chosen to develop the jet because of its past interest in jet development and its previous contracts with the Air Force. Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a comic strip ever published. [citation needed]. Impossible missions always were, and continue to be, their particular area of expertise. ", was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over Superman (see above excerpt). [28] In Al Capp's own words, Dogpatch was "an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere." 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. Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. Schertz, Texas 78154. Among the actors originally considered for the title role were Dick Shawn and Andy Griffith. Skonk Works. Whew it's been a while huh? | by Aslan French | Medium Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. [5] Secretly, a number of advanced features were being incorporated into the new fighter including a significant structural revolution in which the aluminum skin of the aircraft was joggled, fitted and flush-riveted, a design innovation not called for in the army's specification but one that would yield less aerodynamic drag and give greater strength with lower mass. What sets the Skunk Works apart is its unique approach created by founder Kelly Johnson. 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. Aerospace research facility in the United States, "Skunk works" redirects here. 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. 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. They also released an archive hardcover reprint of the complete Shmoo Comics in 2009, followed by a second Shmoo volume of complete newspaper strips in 2011. Those who farmed their turnip fields watched "turnip termites" swarm by the billions every year, locust-like, to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock and all their clothing). Long before today's widespread use of drones, the Skunk Works built an unmanned aerial vehicle that could hitch a ride aboard an A-12. Cute, lovable and intelligent (arguably smarter than Abner, Tiny or Pappy), she was accepted as part of the family ("the youngest", as Mammy invariably introduces her). Li'l Abner Yokum: Abner's character was 6feet 3inches (1.91m) tall and perpetually 19 years old. This drone was launched from the back of a specially modified A-12, known as M-21, of which there were two built. He constantly interspersed boldface type, and included prompt words in parentheses (chuckle!, sob!, gasp!, shudder!, smack!, drool!, cackle!, snort!, gulp!, blush!, ugh!, etc.) [61] The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for various public services: In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the U.S. Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, Christmas Seals, the National Amputation Foundation and Disabled American Veterans,[63] among others. 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. 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. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output . The phrase originated in 1943, during World War II, when Lockheed Corporation built America's first operational jet fighter. A Mach-3 aircraft that could fly continuously for hours on end and literally outrun missiles. Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. Mobsters and criminal-types invariably spoke slangy Brooklynese, and residents of Lower Slobbovia spoke pidgin-Russian, with a smattering of Yinglish. Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared across multiple newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe. 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. (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.) Li'l Abner's mom is the only character in the Dogpatch universe capable of defeating him in hand-to-hand combat. One day, Culvers phone rang and he answered it by saying Skonk Works, inside man Culver speaking. The joke was not lost on his coworkers and soon the employees adopted the name for their mysterious part of Lockheed. Exile in Dogpatch: The Curious Neglect of Cartoonist Al Capp, Town to Honor Famous Cartoonist Who Lived, Worked in Amesbury, "Al Capp's biography card from the National Cartoonists Society", The Hooded Utilitarian: Comics contributions to colloquial English, 18 December 2010, "REVIEWS: Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary,", TCJ.com: "Tales of the Founding of the National Cartoonists Society Part III" from, "Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine: 464: "Li'l Melvin", "Presarvin' Freedom: Al Capp, Treasury Man,", "Egyptians draw inspiration from Civil Rights Movement comic book. 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. Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto", "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney", "Frank N. Stein", "Batula", "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole", "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man". Various Asian, Latin, Native American and European characters spoke in a wide range of specific, broadly caricatured dialects as well. The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however.
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