The other day we linked to THE OFFICIAL L’IL ABNER site. At least as interesting and practically as well known as that strip’s beloved hillbilly protagonist is his creator, Al Capp, who would have been 100 years old this very day! One of the highest in the hierarchy of cartoonist royalty, Capp has been described as “charming…, volatile, contentious, cynical, sarcastic, contradictory, iconoclastic, misanthropic, curmudgeonly, controversial, and sardonically funny…exasperating, infuriating, domineering, obnoxious, loud, lots of fun, acidic and lovable.” He was loved and hated both by those who knew him and by those with whom he came in contact. Politically liberal when the tide was conservative, he swung far to the right in the much more liberal sixties and seventies and in spite of decreased involvement in his own strip, L’IL ABNER genially reflected that switch which hastened its 1977 retirement from newspapers after 43 years. What one cannot take away from the man was that he created some of the most memorable and unique comic strip characters of all time and involved them in storylines that riveted the nation over and over, introducing countless catchphrases and concepts such as Sadie Hawkins Day into our pop culture. HaPpY BiRtHdAy Al, wherever you are…and it sounds like that is a question!