Except for Chic Young's Blondie and Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, no U.S. comic strip has ever scored a solid hit in Britain. But when the lid was taken off newsprint last winter, the London Sunday Pictorial jumped to sign up Al Capp's Li'l Abner. Editor Harry Guy Bartholomew, whose knowing tabloid touch had built the London Daily Mirror (circ. 4,400,000) into the world's biggest daily, thought that his even bigger weekend Pictorial audience (4,800,000) would eat up Capp's super-edible Shmoos as hungrily as U.S. readers had done.
Heralded by front-page blurbs (THE SHMOOS ARE COMING!), Li'l Abner, Daisy
Mae and their rotund, accommodating...
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