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Enraged in advance, and feeling that he was already the dupe of a wily fraud, he took steps to improve his station. But just what steps he took are a matter of conjecture. Capp, a man with such an instinct for the dramatic that he sometimes lapses into purest fiction, swears that he got the copyright from the syndicate by a one-man strike: he quit drawing the strip for two weeks and thus reduced the syndicate to abject submission.
United Feature, however, denies the tale completely. It says it has full title to the copyright. It admits that Capp has much more control over his creature than most cartoonists, but claims that he did not get it until 1947—when he sued the syndicate for a ringing $14 million, and then, with calculated magnanimity, settled out of court.
Success, his boundless faith in himself, and his instinct for defending Li'l Abner to the death, involved him in another conflict—a remarkable feud with his former employer Ham Fisher. Capp parted from Fisher with a definite impression, (to put it mildly) that he had been underpaid and unappreciated. Fisher, a man of Roman selfesteem, considered Capp an ingrate and a whippersnapper, and watched his rise to fame with unfeigned horror.
Quick, Henry, the Flit! As the feud developed, Fisher—apparently by studying Li'l Abner with a magnifying glass—decided that it contained minuscule Rabelaisian detail calculated to undermine the morals of American youth. He caused certain frames of Abner to be enlarged and reprinted, and, after ringing suspicious portions in red, sent them to publishers, urging them to drop Capp's strip.
Capp sniped at Fisher through Li'l Abner. When Fisher had his nose remodeled, Capp gleefully insinuated a horse named "Ham's Nose-bob" into the strip. Last April he wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly about a cartoonist who had once employed him. He named no names, simply titled his piece, "I Remember Monster." The sound of battle finally became too loud, and the respective syndicates called for a peace treaty—which was gravely consummated last August by proxies for each side.
Though he obviously enjoys the excitement of such conflicts, Capp gives them little more thought than the average man gives to golf or bowling; few men in the U.S. are so constantly involved in extracurricular activity. Though Capp is a strict teetotaler (mostly because he feels no need to augment his natural exuberance), he is a great man for parties. He talks well, enjoys applause and makes endless public appearances.
Yak Yak Yak. Besides doing his usual chores during the last fortnight, for instance, he gave off-the-cuff talks at two colleges, Wellesley and Holy Cross, and a full-dress formal speech at the New York Herald Tribune Forum at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
He is still restless and is constantly on the move—usually behind the wheel of one of his two Cadillac convertibles—around a self-designed orbit.