AL CAPP REMEMBERED
By Elliott Caplin

 
The Prince's Secret

I have never seen Alfred contemplative without a pen or pencil in his hand. Even in his most disconsolate moments he telegraphed an excitement, a sense of anticipation, that no matter how discouraged, wretched or hopeless he might feel at any given moment, there was bound to be something wonderful - or at least challenging - around the next turn.

But now he had become thoughtful. Contemplative. And without a drawing utensil in his grip.

"I'm giving up the strip."

There was nothing I could say. Change his mind? Why should I even try? "Li'l Abner" had been so much a part of his life. Forsaking it must have taken tortured hours of brooding. And now, at 65, he was forsaking a world he had created and lived with the major part of his life.

The reasons for this abandonment of a cosmos in which he was the chief deity must have been most persuasive. "Li'l Abner" was the magic carpet he once rode in the DeWitt Theatre in new Haven. The comic strip had made him rich and famous. And now he was finished with it.

Had he dried up? Run out of ideas? I don't think so. His imagination had not failed him. Only his energy was ebbing. He was tired. He didn't want to think on a deadline schedule any more. Forty-three years of dreaming up plots and characters had been, for the most part, a joyous voyage of unexpected delights, of fruitful explorations of a mind that poured out its fantastic treasures of the quaint and curious, the droll and the freakish. To be able to live and prosper doing what you wanted to do, to work with exultation, and love what you have fashioned was a life-style Alfred had achieved, and was now abdicating.

"What will you do?" I asked.

"First, go to England. Maybe write. Always wanted to, you know."