Class 3 - Personal Response

During our tour of the comic strips in the library, there was a particular book titled “Lil’ Abner” that caught my eye. It immediately captured my attention because of its striking style similarity to Archie comics, yet I’d never seen it before. Upon reading the first few pages, it really felt like a mashup between “Blondie” and Archie comics with a pinup art style influence, which led me to wonder why those two titles had lived on to modern day while Lil’ Abner isn’t published any longer.

After doing some research I discovered that Lil’ Abner had been distributed until 1977, where it had been wildly popular and even translated into other languages for 43 years. It even had a variety of live action, movie, and stage adaptations until 1989, where suddenly projects involving Lil’ Abner were dropped. This felt even stranger to me, as from what I saw in the story showed that it had a similar “formula” approach as Blondie and Archie did with a goofy or clumsy male protagonist that a beautiful woman pined over. Stylistically and content-wise, Lil’ Abner was following a trend that succeeded for Blondie and Archie yet failed to make a comeback in the post-2000s world. Admittedly the latter two had continued to be published and adapted for a younger audience, so likely that was the key reason why the two lived on; they were able to adjust the language and art style to better suit new, younger generations whereas the stopped publication of Lil’ Abner robbed it of the chance to continue its story. I personally think that its charming style and likable characters would have made a unique, fun story in the modern world, where a homey country character would have stood out among Archie or Blondie. Maybe it wouldn’t have resonated with younger audiences as much as Archie or Riverdale, but nevertheless, if an adaptation of this story was released, I’d definitely check it out.