Wayback Wednesday: Of Li’l Abner and Little Kings
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Sadie Hawkins Day
November means Sadie Hawkins Day and Lesley Kennedy at History.com writes of the whys and wherefores.
“I would always begin my stories with ‘What if…?’” Capp once said, according to Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary by Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen. “What if there were a special day in Dogpatch in which any bachelor, caught by any lady before sundown, must marry her?”
The premise led to a cliffhanger strip that ran on November 15, 1937, kicking off a storyline that would continue for years about a “strange mountain custom—Sadie Hawkins Day.”
The next year, Schumacher and Kitchen write, the University of Tennessee held an event “in which students, dressed up like Li’l Abner characters, participated in a foot race, and if a coed caught a young man, he was obliged to take her to the newly minted Sadie Hawkins dance.”
By 1939, the authors add, 201 colleges in 188 cities celebrated Sadie Hawkins Day, with the trend also spreading to high schools and church groups.
A tradition that apparently continues to this day.
Today, some calendars recognize November 13 as national Sadie Hawkins Day. While the idea of a girl asking a boy to a dance is no longer a novelty—or the only option—many schools still hold the events, although they’re now sometimes referred to as a more gender-neutral “ask anyone dance,” “turnabout dance” or “MORP” (prom spelled backward).
King Arro and Yupyop
November 13 brings to mind another comic strip. This year we have celebrated the 75th anniversaries of Beetle Bailey and Peanuts first appearances, but there were more newspaper strips that began in 1950. None lasted the 75 years that Beetle Bailey has run or even the almost 50 years of Peanuts but, for example, The Jackson Twins (1950-1979) and Big Ben Bolt (1950-1978) had respectable runs.
And then there was the comparatively short run of King Aroo (1950-1965) by Jack Kent (1920-1985) which has become one of those largely forgotten and unknown strips by the public at large but maintains a core group of fans who appreciate “a comics masterpiece in the tradition of Krazy Kat, Barnaby and Pogo.”
Mike Lynch tells how Jack Kent went on to fame and fortune as a children’s book author. King Aroo was to have its complete collection unfortunately that small niche of fans were not enough to continue the book series beyond two volumes covering the first four years. For comparison the two volumes are a bit bigger and thicker than Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts hardcovers.
And that brings us to another little king, in fact
The Little King
Nearing January 1, 2026 sees the coming of a new round of intellectual properties entering the public domain.
Joe Palooka, Scorchy Smith, Betty Boop, and Blondie; also The Frontiersman, The Robber Baron, and The Girl are among the comic characters that first appeared in 1930 and will become public domain on the first day of 2026.
Add to those the one and only 1930 appearance of The Little King by Otto Soglow in The New Yorker.
Comics historian R. C. Harvey tells us:
The Little King did not appear again until the next year. On March 14, [1931] his minions tell him that the cornerstone laying is imminent, so he goes there—in his carriage with an accompanying parade of footmen, bands, and marching soldiers. At the site, King takes off his robe to reveal workman’s garb underneath, and he approaches the cornerstone with a trowel in hand. He will lay the cornerstone.
The King then appears just about every other week for the rest of the year.
So those wanting to profiteer off public domain only have those six panels to work from.
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