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| The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo | 
 enlarge | Authors: Al Capp, Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $14.99
You Save: $7.96 (35%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $5.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  (9 reviews)
Sales Rank: 977927
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 7.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 1585672165
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781585672165
ASIN: 1585672165
Publication Date: September 11, 2002
Release Date: September 26, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
More than 50 years ago America was taken by storm when Al Capp introduced the Shmoo into his comic strip Lil' Abner; in the words of Life magazine, the nation was "Shmoo-struck." The adorable squash-shaped character was so popular it immediately spawned a massive merchandising craze: there were Shmoo dolls, Shmoo watches-even Shmoo ashtrays and Shmoo fishing lures. More than a hundred Shmoo clubs sprung up around the country-including a "Society for the Advancement of the Shmoo"-and inflatable Shmoos managed to reach German soil as part of the Berlin Air Lift. It was, as a reviewer in The New York Times commented, "a cultural event of enormous significance."
Now, Al Capp's two graphic novels featuring the Shmoo-The Life and Times of the Shmoo and The Return of the Shmoo-are finally back in print, together for the first time in The Complete Life and Times of the Shmoo.
Soon after Lil' Abner discovers a colony of Shmoos, it looks like the citizens of Dogpatch have it made: the charming little critters can lay eggs, give milk, and be broiled into steaks-all Grade A-while their eyes make exquisite suspender buttons, their whiskers fine-grade toothpicks, and their hides the softest leather. The Schmoos provide for every need, and the frisky creatures reproduce at such a prodigious rate that no one even fights over them! Soon, however, America's captains of industry wage war on The Schmoo to protect their profits. Will Lil' Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, and the rest of America choose the Shmoo-or the status quo? The Complete Life and Times of the Shmoo is Al Capp and his incisive social criticism at his best, making it clear why John Steinbeck once hailed the cartoonist as "the best satirist since Laurence Sterne."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Great stuff April 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'd like to point out that the two stories in this book are not all of the Shmoo stories; there were at least a half dozen more.
Pity no one thought to put all of them in a book.
The book does justice to combine two previous books THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE SHMOO and RETURN OF THE SHMOO. Both have been out of print for decades.
Pity about Harlan Ellison's over blown introduction. He can't stick to the subject.
A great piece of nostalgia. November 27, 2007
It's good to see this great part of the Li'l Abner comic strip is once again available. I takes me back to when I was 14 and in High School.Not only did Al Capp give us the wonderful Shmoos;but also Sadie Hawkins Day and all the fun we had with that.
This story of the Shmoo came out in the daily Comic Strips but it also was published in Paperbook form in 1948 and 1949.I still have my copy from those days and wrote a review on it on November 27,2007.
It has the title,"The Life and Times of the Shmoo",by Al Capp.
One thing worth mentioning is the high level of artwork that the cartoonists like Al Capp,Walt Kelley and Chester Gould gave us,and it was so good that it still remains the standard for cartoon art to aspire even today.
Comics Junkie July 31, 2007
Grew up reading this series. Now I have a permanent copy of my own. Good price and great product for comics junkies.
Just as delightful a political statement this side of Gulliver's Travels December 20, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I was 5 I would love to have my father read Pogo, Dagwood and Blondie, and Li'l Abner to me from the daily and Sunday newspapers. When I was 7 years old, I loved reading them by myself and about this time, 1958, the Shmoo became a major theme in the Li'l Abner series. I could not wait for the paper to arrive so I could read the latest adventures of these Shmmos that were so accommodating to meet almost all human needs. Yet even then, at age 7, I began to "get" the message behind the series. This is wonderful social commentary on the limits of capitalism and the limits government will go to ensure that capitalism remains our economic model. However for captitalism to work, there has to be need or the threat of need which creates demand which stimulates supply, and I am sure you know the rest of this formula. If the basic needs of labor are met, they won't work, and thus the costs of labor goes up and the profits go down. Al Capp was brilliant to bring this message into America's homes soon after the McCarthy Anti-American hearings in Washington. Capp, like the Shmoo, is subversive in such a clever endearing entertaining way that when I saw this book I had to re-read the scripts to see what I may have remembered from so many years ago.
The book contains the original Shmoo characters and script from 1948-49 and the return of the Shmoo in 1958. If I was ever to teach High School Seniors in an Economics class, I would have them read this book along with their text, maybe not to strengthen the neurons but to lighten them.
Capp's other Dogpatch hillbilly characters and story lines are also delightful. Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Ma and Pa Yokum, and Sadie Hawkings are all here!
 New Introduction, please June 24, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This was more amusing that I expected. I hadn't read much of "Li'l Abner" and was surprised. However, I have two objections to this book. First, the original strips seem a bit truncated. Surely, they could have gotten more of the dailies in this book than they did. And second, the awful introduction by Harlan Ellison. He seems to be in love with the sound of his voice and not necessarily a Li'l Abner fan. The Schmoo seems to have been a craze like the "Pet Rock." More information about that and less about Ellison's advertures in New York City would have been welcomed.
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