MYTHCOMICS: "ANYFACE" (LI'L ABNER, April 19-May 31, 1947)

 Rather than wasting time summing up how Al Capp's "comic-within-a-comic" FEARLESS FOSDICK evolved within Al Capp's LI'L ABNER feature, here's the Wiki writeup on the subject. 

The most interesting things about the 1942 introduction of Fosdick within the continuity of the ABNER strip are (1) the fact that what one can see of Fosdick looks almost indistinguishable from Tracy, without the pencil mustache seen on later versions, and (2) the short spoof concentrates only upon the idea that Fosdick's real-world creator "Lester Gooch" puts the fictional detective into death-traps without knowing how to extricate said hero. Jay Maeder's superlative survey of Gould's groundbreaking strip, DICK TRACY: THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY, attests that on occasion Chester Gould did have to scramble to find some way to save Tracy from his final curtain. However, in retrospect the critique seems petty, given that Al Capp shared Gould's penchant for placing characters in cliffhanger situations and then getting them out with ridiculous contrivances-- probably more so than Gould ever resorted to.

Over the next four years Capp continued to develop new elements of the Fosdick character. He was just as much a moral ramrod as Tracy, but Fosdick had no brains whatever and so was incapable of anything like detection. He was sexually abstemious, telling one female pursuer that no woman's lips but his mother's would ever touch his (which would lead to some Freudian conclusions Capp might not have intended). And in one adventure, cartoonish Gooch learns that his new villain for Fosdick, a rock-headed crook named "Stone Face," actually exists in Gooch's world. The criminal wants to force Gooch to destroy the fictional Fosdick's reputation with adoring kids by forcing him to get married, a fate which particularly horrifies Fosdick's number one fan, Li'l Abner Yokum. After various contrivances, Stone Face encounters Abner and tries to kill the youth by hitting Abner with his rocky noggin-- and the hard-headed hillbilly wins the contest.

The first truly ambitious Fosdick story ran through May 1947, though it includes some setup in April within the "Abner universe." Gooch's publishers harangue the artist to create yet more grotesque villains to enthrall FOSDICK's readers, "the kiddies." (Two years later, Gershon Legman would republish some of his anti-violence essays in the book LOVE AND DEATH, saying in all seriousness the same thing Capp said for a joke.) Gooch's artistic insanity gets him put into an asylum. Further, when a rival publisher threatens Gooch's life, a certain hulking hillbilly is hired to guard the artist's welfare-- and to make sure that the strips keep coming out on time. This provided Capp with the excuse to have Abner periodically interrupt the FOSDICK continuity to remind readers, "it's only a comic strip about another comic strip."

"Anyface" seems to be the first arc in which Capp steps up the ultraviolence to epic levels, to parody DICK TRACYs legendary levels of mayhem. The detective, informed that a villain named Anyface can make himself look like anyone, comes to the random conclusion that the fiend would logically make himself look like the city's most beneficent philanthropist, so Fosdick immediately shoots the innocent man through the head. Further, the real Anyface was masquerading as the official who gave Fosdick the assignment-- though, contrary to his boast, Anyface doesn't do or say anything to the klutz-cop to suggest offing the victim. (BTW, nowhere in the narrative does Capp explain how Anyface duplicates the clothes of the people he imitates, since he can only change his physical form.)

             

Unlike the majority of ABNER villains, Anyface never seems to have any specific aim in mind. He seems to exist merely to torment Fosdick, as Mr. Mxyzptlk does Superman. Anyface hits on the idea that the best way to utterly humiliate the idiot officer is to pretend to be his long-suffering girlfriend (here named "Bess Backache" in emulation of Dick Tracy's girl Tess Trueheart) and inveigle Fosdick into marrying "her," his worst enemy. Capp does not drop even the slightest hint as to how Anyface presses his suit when the real girlfriend couldn't get Fosdick to the altar over the course of twelve years. The logical conclusion that modern audiences would make, that of premarital sex, might or might not have been an idea Capp toyed with. Still, he would have known he could not have even implied the subject in a family comic strip. So, he passed over the matter. In the "real world," Abner is deeply distressed by his "ideel" being turned into a pathetic fool. Daisy Mae and Mammy become concerned that Abner might "kill himself in grief." Mammy deduces that Gooch has come up with this "worse-than-death trap" because he's gone crazy, so Mammy lays plans to go straighten the artist out.

Unfortunately for Abner, Insane Gooch finishes one more insane set of strips before Mammy makes the scene and scrambles his brains back into normalcy. Abner is initially exultant to see that Fosdick, his brain possibly prompted into something like thought by his mortification, lay a trap for Anyface, though of course it's one that shows the super-cop's utter disregard for collateral damage. Fosdick forces 69 persons suspected of being Anyface (why?) into a single room and cranks up the heat to 500 degrees, believing that the heat will melt the fiend's taffy-like features. But in the last strip produced by Insane Gooch, Fosdick's features begin melting, revealing that he, the incorruptible lawman, is actually Anyface. Abner confronts Gooch and demands a rational explanation. But Gooch has had his brains "normalized," and now he has no idea what he was thinking while insane. Capp leaves his hillbilly star on the horns of an insoluble dilemma, implying the complete identity between good and evil--

--Well, for roughly two months. Capp probably never devised an escape-hatch at all but instead exploited the situation by encouraging his readers to invent some solution that would "save" Fearless Fosdick. Capp chose a suggestion that he printed in a single strip on June 28, 1947, and that was technically the end of the "Anyface" arc. Said solution was worse than anything either Gould or Capp had ever devised. While Anyface-Fosdick's face is melting, the real Fosdick walks into the hotbox-room and captures the felon. So-- if Anyface was just masquerading as Fosdick, why did he participate in Fosdick's trap, knowing that his face would melt in front of all those witnesses? It might've made a little sense if Anyface had caught and tied up the klutz-cop, planning to kill all of the suspects in the hotbox and blame the deed on Fosdick. But I doubt that Capp cared about anything but keeping Fosdick in play, and most of the readers who liked Fosdick probably held the same opinion.

Since Capp didn't really provide the lame solution, I'd argue that the Anyface arc really does end with the revelation that hero and villain are one, even though throughout the story they've been repeatedly seen as separate beings. These fourth-wall shenanigans remind me of the overpraised Berthold Brecht, but Capp was no Brechtian ironist, just a joke-teller who felt like taking shots at any target. If I had to choose which artist, Capp or Gould, devised the greater number of lame cliffhanger resolutions, I'd choose Capp. So it's puzzling that he would jab Gould over the practice of improbable death-traps. Capp was actually more on target in his implication that the world of DICK TRACY was one in which innocents were getting killed as Tracy pursued his crusade for justice, and thus all the gags about hecatombs of dead citizens make a much better spoof on Chester Gould. Finally, when it comes to strip-artists whose "insanity" allowed them to spawn innumerable grotesques, Capp and Gould are probably roughly equal-- which is a subject worth pursuing in a separate essay.