Everything about the life and art of Al Capp, creator of the mid-century comic strip masterpiece Li'l Abner, was brash and over the top. Even the way he lost his left leg at the age of nine was right out of a Warner Brothers cartoon: He got run over by a street car. As one might expect, that traumatic event affected the rest of Capp's life for good and for ill. It inspired him to become good at something not requiring the use of two legs, yet it also compounded his innate and profound self-loathing. The lifelong pain and embarrassment it caused him (he always walked with an awkward, comical gait) only contributed to his negative, curmudgeonly psyche.
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