Schertz, Texas 78154. Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. The original "Skonk Works" was a liquor still where something was always brewing in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. The meaning of the phrase has evolved, and today it means something broader outside of aeronautics; that causes confusion, which further fosters poor managerial decisions. John Updike, calling Li'l Abner a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean. In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp", creator of "Li'l Adam". Comic dialects were also devised for offbeat British characters like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who had a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech was a clipped, uppercrust King's English). (The relative explained that she would have dropped him off sooner, but waited until she happened to be in the neighborhood.) This dunks Upper Slobbovia into Lower Slobbovia, and raises the latter into the formera classic example of a literal revolution. Capp is also the subject of an upcoming PBS American Masters documentary produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning. The Birthplace Of Stealth: 10 Things You Didn't Know About - HotCars ), yet Capp would not budge. Privacy Policy. Skunk Works history started with the P-38 Lightning in 1939[1][2] and the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. (Titanium supply was largely dominated by the Soviet Union, so the CIA set up a dummy corporation to acquire source material.) Terrifically long hours. [3] Theirs is the official Lockheed Skunk Works story: The Air Tactical Service Command (ATSC) of the Army Air Force met with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to express its need for a jet fighter. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. 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. Two days later the go-ahead was given to Lockheed to start development and the Skunk Works was born, with Kelly Johnson at the helm. The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. 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. Comics historian Don Markstein commented that Capp's "use of language was both unique and universally appealing; and his clean, bold cartooning style provided a perfect vehicle for his creations."[35]. Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. replied the voice at the other end. [9], In 2009, the Skunk Works was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. Li'l Abner: Al Capp, Skunk Works, Dogpatch USA, Shmoo, Fearless Fosdick, Frank Frazetta, Basil Wolverton, Bob Lubbers, Lower Slobb I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. Capp derived the family name "Yokum" as a combination of yokel and hokum. In many localities, the tradition continues. 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. "Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. 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 name "Skunk Works" and the skunk design are now registered trademarks of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Four operational missions were conducted over China, but the camera packages were never successfully recovered. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip Li'L Abner was formed by Johnson to build America's first jet fighter. "Daisy Mae" redirects here. Capp originally created it as a comic plot device, but in 1939, only two years after its inauguration, a double-page spread in Life proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges". (Response: ", "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for, "Th' ideel o' ev'ry one hunnerd percent, red-blooded American boy! Today's column maps the scope of change. In July 1938, while the rest of Lockheed was busy tooling up to build Hudson reconnaissance bombers to fill a British contract, a small group of engineers was assigned to fabricate the first prototype of what would become the P-38 Lightning. (A familiar radio personality, Capp was frequently heard on the NBC broadcast series, Monitor. Li'l Abner | The Blog by Javier [18] The company also holds several registrations of it with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Origin of the name "Skunk Works" The name originated from cartoonist Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip, which featured an outdoor still called the "Skonk Works" in which "Kickapoo Joy Juice" was manufactured from old shoes and dead skunks. 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 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. And then they would deliver. "Nearly all comic strips, even today, are owned and controlled by syndicates, not the strips' creators. Three members of the original Broadway cast did not appear in the film version: Charlotte Rae (who was replaced by Billie Hayes early in the stage production), Edie Adams (who was pregnant during the filming) and Tina Louise. There was, however, one fellow (whose name I forget) who ran the "skunk works" skinning dead skunks (the unpleasant animal). 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. Li'l Abner provided a whole new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for Pogo, Feiffer, Doonesbury and MAD. Like the Coconino County depicted in George Herriman's Krazy Kat and the Okefenokee Swamp of Walt Kelly's Pogo, and, most recently and famously, The Simpsons' "Springfield", Dogpatch's distinctive cartoon landscape became as identified with the strip as any of its characters. Big Funds Need a 'Skunk Works' to Stir Ideas People magazine ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free New York Times devoted nearly a full page to the event," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. Warren M. Bodie, journalist, historian, and Skunk Works engineer from 1977 to 1984, wrote that engineering independence, elitism and secrecy of the Skunk Works variety were demonstrated earlier when Lockheed was asked by Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey (later air force brigadier general) to build for the United States Army Air Corps a high speed, high altitude fighter to compete with German aircraft. Tellingly, Kurtzman resisted doing feature parodies of either Li'l Abner or Dick Tracy in the comic book Mad, despite their prominence. The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Ironically, this highly irregular policy has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. A team engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's comic strip, "Li'l 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. 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. Schertz, TX | Official Website The logo, which features a skunk standing on its hind feet with its front legs folded on his chest and smiling confidently, has generated some confusion for generations born well after LilAbner was pulled from the comic pages. Mammy was regularly seen scrubbing Pappy in an outdoor oak tub ("Once a month, rain or shine"). 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. It made its debut in Li'l Abner on November 15, 1937. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. But high altitude was not enough. For Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, It's All About Getting To The Wed!! It first appeared in 1942 and proved so popular that it ran intermittently in Li'l Abner over the next 35 years. You wanna argue about it? It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Slipping past Iraqi radar on the morning of January 17, 1991, Lockheeds Nighthawk bombed thirty-seven critical targets across Baghdad, a surgical strike that led, in just forty-three days, to the successful conclusion of Operation Desert Storm. Mammy solved the problem with a tooth extraction and ended the episode with her most famous dictum. "How to Read Li'l Abner Intelligently" from. Lower Slobbovia and Dogpatch are both comic examples of modern dystopian satire. In 1976, the Skunk Works began production on a pair of stealth technology demonstrators for the U.S. Air Force named Have Blue in Building 82 at Burbank. They have filed several challenges against registrants of domain names containing variations on the term under anti-cybersquatting policies, and have lost a case under the .uk domain name dispute resolution service against a company selling cannabis seeds and paraphernalia, which used the word "skunkworks" in its domain name (referring to "Skunk", a variety of the cannabis plant). For Water Innovation To Fly, We Need A Skunk Works It was Kellys unconventional organizational approach that allowed the Skunk Works to streamline work and operate with unparalleled efficiency. What sets the Skunk Works apart is its unique approach created by founder Kelly Johnson. His appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees; Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. Culver later said at an interview conducted in 1993 that "when Kelly Johnson heard about the incident, he promptly fired me. Al Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts. 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. 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. as asides, to bolster the effect of the printed speech balloons. Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[51]. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." In the comic, there was a running joke about a mysterious and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works," where a strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange ingredients. [6] The range modifications were performed in Lockheed's Building 304, starting with 100 P-38F models on April 15, 1942. During September 2015 the proposed aircraft was deemed to have developed into more of a tactical reconnaissance aircraft, instead of strategic reconnaissance.[11]. Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature and grotesquerie, the strip's overall place in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. 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." Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as a consultant on nearly all of them. The Schertz Public Library has received the 2022 Achievement of Library Excellence Award from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association (TMLDA). Skunkworks Robotics - Our Inspiration - WildApricot Taking action to help you protect what matters most. [4] The "Skonk Works" was a dilapidated factory located on the remote outskirts of Dogpatch, in the backwoods of Kentucky. He lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. 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. January 8, 2021 What is Skunk Works? Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. They included: Al Capp, a native northeasterner, wrote all the final dialogue in Li'l Abner using his approximation of a mock-southern dialect (including phonetic sounds, eye dialect (nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation), nonstop "creative" spelling and deliberate malapropisms). Everybody almost dead.. Harvey. Capp suggests November 26, and Daisy rewarded him with a kiss. Later, Capp licensed and was part-owner of an 800-acre (3.2km2) $35 million theme park called Dogpatch USA near Harrison, Arkansas. Gary Herbert says 'tone' of fundraising will change amid criticism", "Dogpatch Confidential" by Dennis Drabelle (, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Li%27l_Abner&oldid=1141466385, Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in, "Ef Ah had mah druthers, Ah'd druther", "As any fool kin plainly see!" All Rights Reserved. Missions Impossible: The Skunk Works Story | Lockheed Martin To comment on the smell and the secrecy the project entailed, another engineer, Irv Culver, referred to the facility as "Skonk Works". 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. 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. In late 1959, Skunk Works received a contract to build five A-12 aircraft at a cost of $96 million. Construction Technical Specifications | Schertz, TX It even made the cover of Life magazine on March 31, 1952 illustrating an article by Capp titled "It's Hideously True!! It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt. 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. (Although it is also the approximate Northern European pronunciation of the name "Joachim".) He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. Skonk Works. Whew it's been a while huh? | by Aslan French | Medium The smell at the site is credited with being the basis for the Skunk Works name. Fellow employees quickly adopted the name for their mysterious division of Lockheed and eventually "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works.". ", Capp would answer, "Both." This project marked the birth of what would become the Skunk Works, with founder Kelly Johnson at its helm. In one storyline Dogpatch's "Cannonball Express" train, after 1,563 tries, finally delivers its "cargo" to Dogpatch citizens on October 12, 1946, Receiving a 13-year stack of newspapers, Li'l Abner's family realizes that the Great Depression is on and that banks should close; they race to take their money out of the bank before realizing they have no money to begin with. Culver answered the phone in his trademark fashion of the time, by picking up the phone and stating "Skonk Works, inside man Culver". As a Skunk Works program manager aptly stated, The problem with Skunk Works programs is that they typically get credit for changing history long after they actually change history., 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. The local children were read harrowing tales from "Ice-sop's Fables", which were parodies of classic Aesop Fables, but with a darkly sardonic bent (and titles like "Coldilocks and the Three Bares"). 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. This drone was launched from the back of a specially modified A-12, known as M-21, of which there were two built. 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. No other cartoonist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. Join 110,000 readers each month and get the latest news and entertainment from the world of general aviation direct to your inbox, daily. [1][2] In 1964, Johnson told Look magazine that the bourbon distillery was the first of five Lockheed skunk works locations. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. However, due to its enormous popularity and the numerous fan letters he received, Capp made it a tradition in the strip every November, lasting four decades. For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.) [13] The first YP-38 was built there before the team moved back to Lockheed's main factory a year later. Shortly after, the go-ahead was given for Lockheed to start developing the United States' first jet fighter. Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. Consequently, Johnson's organization operated out of a rented circus tent, and the adjacent manufacturing plant produced a strong odor that permeated throughout the tent. [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). [64] The character was voiced by Frank Graham.[65]. [14], During the development of the P-80 Shooting Star, Johnson's engineering team was located adjacent to a malodorous plastics factory. An American folk event, Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday entirely created within the strip. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. We develop laser weapon systems, radio frequency and other directed energy technologies for air, ground and sea platforms to provide an affordable countermeasure alternative. A Mach-3 aircraft that could fly continuously for hours on end and literally outrun missiles. [10] Pappy is dull-witted and gullible (in one storyline after he is conned by Marryin' Sam into buying Vanishing cream because he thinks it makes him invisible when he picks a fight with his nemesis Earthquake McGoon), but not completely without guile. Using sheets of titanium coated with heat-dissipating black paint, engineers created the SR-71 Blackbird. Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). 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. Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Over the years, Li'l Abner characters have inspired diverse compositions in pop, jazz, country and even rock 'n' roll: No comprehensive reprint of the series had been attempted until Kitchen Sink Press began publishing the Li'l Abner Dailies in hardcover and paperback, one year per volume, in 1988. [1][2][3] The Sunday page debuted six months after the daily, on February 24, 1935. [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. Li'l Abner visits the corrupt Squeezeblood comic strip syndicate in a classic Sunday continuity from October 12, 1947. I'll never knock his talent."[56]. compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp. Mind Works is dedicated to excellence in psychology and counseling. 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. Privacy Terms of Use EU and UK Data Protection Notice Cookies. [1] In November 1941, Kelsey gave the unofficial nod to Johnson and the P-38 team to engineer a drop tank system to extend range for the fighter, and they completed the initial research and development without a contract. Skunk Works - Wikiwand Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. 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 Gets a Job Part 2, script and art by Al Capp; Abner takes a job at the skunk works. He was a fan of the Lil' Abner comic strip. After Capp's death, the Shmoo was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series for TV. Brown, Rodger, "Dogpatch USA: The Road to Hokum" article, Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42, explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, 418 Search and Rescue Operational Training Squadron, "This Day in Jewish History / Al Capp, Choleric Creator of Li'l Abner, Dies an Embittered Man", Li'l Abner "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Daisy Mae "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Mammy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Pappy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Honest Abe "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Tiny Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Marryin' Sam "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Kickapoo Joy Juice page at deniskitchen.com, Joe Btfsplk "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary Michael Schumacher, Denis Kitchen Google Books, General Bullmoose "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Earthquake McGoon "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Evil-Eye Fleegle "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Sadie Hawkins "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Fearless Fosdick "biography" at deniskitchen.com, The Shmoo "biography" at deniskitchen.com.

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