We develop laser weapon systems, radio frequency and other directed energy technologies for air, ground and sea platforms to provide an affordable countermeasure alternative. Honest Abe Yokum: Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's little boy was born in 1953 "after a pregnancy that ambled on so long that readers began sending me medical books", wrote Capp. Li'l Abner featured a whole menagerie of allegorical animals over the years each one was designed to satirically showcase another disturbing aspect of human nature. As a Skunk Works program manager aptly stated, The problem with Skunk Works programs is that they typically get credit for changing history long after they actually change history., 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. The bumbling detective became the star of his own NBC-TV puppet show that same year. It all turned out to be a collaborative hoax, however cooked up by Capp and his longtime pal Saunders as an elaborate publicity stunt. Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. The U-2 ceased overflights when Francis Gary Powers was shot down during a mission on May 1, 1960, while over Russia. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with an original score by Nelson Riddle. His philosophy is spelled out in his 14 Rules and Practices. He was a fan of the Lil' Abner comic strip. Capp claimed that he found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with, "I didn't start this Mammy Yokum did." Learn how we are strengthening the economies, industries and communities of our global partner nations. "A wish is a wish," says the genie. Fearless Fosdick and other Li'l Abner comic strip parodies, such as "Jack Jawbreaker!" Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip Li'L Abner was formed by Johnson to build America's first jet fighter. The U-2 was tested at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert, and the Flight Test Engineer in charge was Joseph F. Ware, Jr. [49], Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins dance are two of several terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. 1 (19341936). The term Skunk Works is synonymous with the research and development department of the Lockheed Martin Co. It featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA. Gary Herbert says 'tone' of fundraising will change amid criticism", "Dogpatch Confidential" by Dennis Drabelle (, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Li%27l_Abner&oldid=1141466385, Al Capp claimed that he always strove to give incidental characters in, "Ef Ah had mah druthers, Ah'd druther", "As any fool kin plainly see!" "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Fosdick's duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime, and it's too much to ask any law-enforcement officer to do both, I suppose." Li'l Abner provided a whole new template for contemporary satire and personal expression in comics, paving the way for Pogo, Feiffer, Doonesbury and MAD. The F-22 is the worlds preeminent air dominance fighter and a proven strategic deterrent. In 1947, Will Eisner's The Spirit satirized the comic strip business in general, as a denizen of Central City tries to murder cartoonist "Al Slapp", creator of "Li'l Adam". Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as a consultant on nearly all of them. Most of the old Skunk Works buildings in Burbank were demolished in the late 1990s to make room for parking lots. In 1964, Capp left United Features and took Li'l Abner to the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.[52]. [37] Washable Jones later appeared in the strip in a Shmoo-related storyline in 1949, and he appeared with the Shmoos in two one-shot comics Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels (1950, a premium for Oxydol laundry detergent) and Washable Jones and the Shmoo #1 (1953, published by the Capp-owned publisher Toby Press). Capp had a platoon of assistants in later years, who worked under his direct supervision. This vital reconnaissance, unobtainable by other means, averted a war in Europe and a nuclear crisis in Cuba. Email the City of Schertz. Contest (1951), the Roger the Lodger Contest (1964) and many others. Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes[45] and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li'l Abner. Other familiar silent comedy veterans in the cast include Bud Jamison, Lucien Littlefield, Johnny Arthur, Mickey Daniels, and ex-Keystone Cops Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Al St. John. Al Capp was reportedly not pleased with the results, and the series was discontinued after five shorts. Pappy Yokum wasn't always feckless, however. They included Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson and, notably, a young Frank Frazetta, who penciled the Sunday continuity from studio roughs from 1954 to the end of 1961 before his fame as a fantasy artist. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Culver answered the phone in his trademark fashion of the time, by picking up the phone and stating "Skonk Works, inside man Culver". [4] It was originally distributed by United Feature Syndicate and, later by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Capp originally created it as a comic plot device, but in 1939, only two years after its inauguration, a double-page spread in Life proclaimed, "On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges". Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a comic strip ever published. [5] Secretly, a number of advanced features were being incorporated into the new fighter including a significant structural revolution in which the aluminum skin of the aircraft was joggled, fitted and flush-riveted, a design innovation not called for in the army's specification but one that would yield less aerodynamic drag and give greater strength with lower mass. Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. Although ostensibly set in the Kentucky mountains, situations often took the characters to different destinations including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, the South American Amazon, tropical islands, the Moon, Mars, etc. Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. During the entirety of the Cold War, the Skunk Works was located in Burbank, California, on the eastern side of Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport (341203N 1182107W / 34.200768N 118.351826W / 34.200768; -118.351826). Al Capp once told one of his assistants that he knew Li'l Abner had finally "arrived" when it was first pirated as a pornographic Tijuana bible parody in the mid-1930s. Lockheed was chosen to develop the jet because of its past interest in jet development and its previous contracts with the Air Force. Skunk Works meaning and philosophy explained. It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994. Within three years Abner's circulation climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. On paper, the specifications read like works of pure fantasy: a spy plane capable of taking crystal-clear photographs from 70,000 feet. The odor put out by Skonk Works was so hideous people avoided the area and the people who worked there. "Capp had always advocated a more activist agenda for the Society, and he had begun in December 1949 to make his case in the Newsletter as well as at the meetings," wrote comics historian R. C. By 1952, the event was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 known venues. As a result, the XP-38 was the first 400mph fighter in the world. Li'l Abner Gets a Job Part 2, script and art by Al Capp; Abner takes a job at the skunk works. Hot Dogs! With John Hodiak in the title role, the Li'l Abner radio serial ran weekdays on NBC from Chicago, from November 20, 1939, to December 6, 1940. The radio show was not written by Al Capp but by Charles Gussman. Wed!! Initially known as "Mysterious Yokum" (there was even an Ideal doll marketed under this name) due to a debate regarding his gender (he was stuck in a pants-shaped stovepipe for the first six weeks), he was renamed "Honest Abe" (after President Abraham Lincoln) to thwart his early tendency to steal. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li'l Abner," wrote comics historian Rick Marschall in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989). Not taking anything away from Kurtzman, who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Conceived in 1943, the Skunk Works divisiona name inspired by a mysterious locale from the comic strip LiL Abnerwas formed by Johnson to build Americas first jet fighter. Charlton published the short-lived Hillbilly Comics by Art Gates in 1955, featuring "Gumbo Galahad", who was a dead ringer for Li'l Abner, as was Pokey Oakey by Don Dean, which ran in MLJ's Top-Notch Laugh and Pep Comics. Mammy Yokum: Born Pansy Hunks, Mammy was the scrawny, highly principled "sassiety" leader and bare knuckle "champeen" of the town of Dogpatch. In 2002 the Chicago Tribune, in a review of The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo, noted: "The wry, ornery, brilliantly perceptive satirist will go down as one of the Great American Humorists." The once informal nickname is now theregistered trademarkof the company: Skunk Works. Capp, a lifelong chain smoker, died from emphysema two years later at age 70, at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire, on November 5, 1979. Those who farmed their turnip fields watched "turnip termites" swarm by the billions every year, locust-like, to devour Dogpatch's only crop (along with their homes, their livestock and all their clothing). Both the Trump and Panic parodies were drawn by EC legend, Will Elder. By the early 1940s the comic strip event had swept the nation's imagination and acquired a life of its own. Several years later, the U.S. Air Force became interested in the design, and it ordered the SR-71 Blackbird, a two-seater version of the A-12. Tiny Yokum: "Tiny" was a misnomer; Li'l Abner's kid brother remained perpetually innocent and 1512 "y'ars" old despite the fact that he was an imposing, 7-foot (2.1m) tall behemoth. The first Li'l Abner movie was made at RKO Radio Pictures in 1940, starring Jeff York (credited as Granville Owen), Martha O'Driscoll, Mona Ray and Johnnie Morris. Li'l Abner himself was a mattress tester, and most others were either moonshiners or bootleggers. Capp introduced Tiny to fill the bachelor role played reliably for nearly two decades by Li'l Abner himself, until his fateful 1952 marriage threw the carefully orchestrated dynamic of the strip out of whack for a period. [3] Theirs is the official Lockheed Skunk Works story: The Air Tactical Service Command (ATSC) of the Army Air Force met with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to express its need for a jet fighter. Since this movie predates their comic strip marriage, Abner makes a last-minute escape (natcherly!). or even Little Annie Fanny. Capp himself appeared in numerous print ads. Comic dialects were also devised for offbeat British characters like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who had a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech was a clipped, uppercrust King's English). Kitchen is currently[when?] Other news is the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president on March 4, 1933 (although Mammy Yokum thinks the President is Teddy Roosevelt), and a picture of Germany's "new leader" Adolf Hitler who claims to love peace while reviewing 20,000 new planes (April 21, 1933). I have seen this epithet before, usually in the phrase skunk works, meaning a semi-official project team that is tacitly licensed to bend the rules and think outside the box. He challenged the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation and hindered progress. According to the strip, scores of locals were done in yearly by the . In one storyline, he lives up to his nickname when during a nationwide search for a pair of socks sewn by Betsy Ross; after finding that his father was the current owner and preparing to trade them for the reward (a handshake from the President of the United States), he confesses at the last second that they were not his to give. Today's column maps the scope of change. It cruised at 70,000 feet, snapping aerial photographs of Soviet installations. President Eisenhower needed something quicker, stronger, and more elusive. Skunk Works was responsible for several innovative aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, followed by the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. A total of six Collier trophies, the most prestigious award in the aeronautics industry, have been collected by the Skunk Works division since 1943, but its quite possible the divisions most impressive legacy has yet to be written. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." Over the years, the Skunk Works division in Palmdale, California, was given a more official moniker, Lockheeds Advanced Development Programs, but its mission remained unchanged: build the worlds most experimental aircraft and breakthrough technologies in abject secrecy at a pace impossible to rival. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. Kelly Johnson headed the Skunk Works until 1975. There were even Dogpatch-themed family restaurants called "Li'l Abner's" in Louisville, Kentucky, Morton Grove, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington. Zugang! Johnson promised the Pentagon theyd have their first prototype in 150 days. One month later, a young engineer named Clarence "Kelly" L. Johnson and his hand-picked team of engineers and mechanics delivered the XP-80 Shooting Star jet fighter proposal to the ATSC. I'll fight ya, and I'll win! German jets had appeared over Europe. During the development of the P-80, work was carried out in a circus tent, with harsh chemicals from the nearby manufacturing plant filling it with a strong odor. [30] The favorite dish of the starving natives was raw polar bear (and vice versa). I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted. Kellys 14 Rules and Practices" are still in use today as evidenced by our small, empowered teams, streamlined processes and culture that values attempting to do things that havent been done before. (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.) 2023 Lockheed Martin Corporation. Li'l Abner was a comic strip with fire in its belly and a brain in its head. In his November 5, 1977 strip, Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae make a final visit to Capp, and Daisy insisted the Capp settle on a date. Drawn by cartoonist Steve Stiles,[58] the new Abner was approved by Capp's widow, and brother Elliott Caplin, but Al Capp's daughter, Julie Capp, objected at the last minute and permission was withdrawn. The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. I wonder what the derivation is? Li'l Abner: Al Capp, Skunk Works, Dogpatch USA, Shmoo, Fearless Fosdick, Frank Frazetta, Basil Wolverton, Bob Lubbers, Lower Slobb The story concerns Daisy Mae's efforts to catch Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. The name skunkworks came about by accident. [7] In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip "ideel", Fearless Fosdick. Though lightning-fast, the Blackbird was not invisible. [57] "When he retired Li'l Abner, newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. German jets had appeared over Europe. ", Capp would answer, "Both." Kelly Johnson set them apart from the rest of the factory in a walled-off section of one building, off limits to all but those involved directly. FactSnippet No. Long before today's widespread use of drones, the Skunk Works built an unmanned aerial vehicle that could hitch a ride aboard an A-12. We offers a wide array of diagnostic, psychotherapy, and consultation services for children, adolescents, adults and families. The name stuck. After 1989, Lockheed reorganized its operations and relocated the Skunk Works to Site 10 at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where it remains in operation today. as asides, to bolster the effect of the printed speech balloons. As the development was very secret, the employees were told to be careful even with how they answered phone calls. He had an unfortunate predilection for snitching "preserved turnips" and smoking corn silk behind the woodshed much to his chagrin when Mammy caught him. made famous between 1934 and 1977 as the home of professional mattress tester Li'l Abner, in the comic strip written and drawn by Al . Capp was also caricatured as an ill-mannered, boozy cartoonist (Capp was a teetotaler in real life) named "Hal Rapp" in the comic strip Mary Worth by Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst. When the Army Air Forces officially asked for a range extension solution it was ready. Her authority was unquestioned, and her characteristic phrase, "Ah has spoken! I am proud to see the classic logo - my father worked for more than 30 years at Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects, known as Skunk Works. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier in the pages of Li'l Abner. Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from, Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 05:42. Later, many fans and critics saw Paul Henning's popular TV sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962'71) as owing much of its inspiration to Li'l Abner, prompting Alvin Toffler to ask Capp about the similarities in a 1965 Playboy interview. Uncle Sam needed a counterpunch, and Johnson got a call. Capp has credited his inspiration for vividly stylized language to early literary influences like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon, as well as Old-time radio and the Burlesque stage. He constantly interspersed boldface type, and included prompt words in parentheses (chuckle!, sob!, gasp!, shudder!, smack!, drool!, cackle!, snort!, gulp!, blush!, ugh!, etc.) Boody Rogers' Babe was a peculiar series of comic books about a beautiful hillbilly girl who lived with her kin in the Ozarks with many similarities to Li'l Abner. The term "Skunk Works" came from Al Capp 's satirical, hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner, which was immensely popular from 1935 through the 1950s. Publicity campaigns were devised to boost circulation and increase public visibility of Li'l Abner, often coordinating with national magazines, radio and television. By 1960, Soviet radar and surface-to-air missile technology had caught up with the U-2. Engineers from Skunk Works subsequently developed the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 . Kelly Johnson and his team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven less than was required. But in 1947 Capp sued United Feature Syndicate for $14 million, publicly embarrassed UFS in Li'l Abner, and wrested ownership and control of his creation the following year."[51]. Consequently, Johnson's organization operated out of a rented circus tent, and the adjacent manufacturing plant produced a strong odor that permeated throughout the tent. During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, comic book adaptations, public service material and other specialty work in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them (see Sadie Hawkins Day). Named for a run-down factory in the Li'l Abner comics, Skunk Works has been the home of some of the most advanced plane research in history, including the U-2, F-22 Raptor and SR-71 Blackbird . Mammy dominated the Yokum clan through the force of her personality, and dominated everyone else with her fearsome right uppercut (sometimes known as her "Goodnight, Irene" punch), which helped her uphold law, order and decency. A customer would go to the Skunk Works with a request, and on a handshake the project would begin no contracts in place, no official submittal process. With adult readers far outnumbering juveniles, Li'l Abner forever cleared away the concept that humor strips were solely the domain of adolescents and children. He hosted at least five television programs between 1952 and 1972 three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (twice), Al Capp, Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk", with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons), and a game show called Anyone Can Win. Similarities between Li'l Abner and the early Mad include the incongruous use of mock-Yiddish slang terms, the nose-thumbing disdain for pop culture icons, the rampant black humor, the dearth of sentiment and the broad visual styling. Mind Works integrates the most recent advances in psychology with time-tested treatment approaches. On July 3, 1963, the plane reached a sustained speed of Mach 3 at an astounding 78,000 feet, and remains the worlds fastest and highest-flying manned aircraft. Her moniker was a pun on both salami and Salome. City of Schertz. This drone was launched from the back of a specially modified A-12, known as M-21, of which there were two built. According to publisher Denis Kitchen, Capp's "hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. Customer Care. Mind Works offers you the expertise . compiling a monograph on the life and career of Al Capp. [12] Pursued by local lovelies Hopeful Mudd and Boyless Bailey, Tiny was even dumber and more awkward than Abner, if that can be imagined. [66] The storylines and villains were mostly separate from the comic strip and unique to the show. "What?" Skunk Works engineers subsequently developed the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, and F-35 Lightning II, the latter being used in the air forces of several countries. Forget about it slam dunk! [6] Early in the strip's history, Abner's primary goal in the storyline was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, the virtuous, voluptuous, barefoot Dogpatch damsel and scion of the Yokums' blood feud enemies the Scraggs, who were her character's bloodthirsty kinfolk. Skunk Works is an industry leader in rapid prototyping, pushing the boundaries of whats possible to quickly design, develop and test innovative solutions. An engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp's newspaper comic strip, "Li'l Abner." as well as some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's imagination: Exceeding every burlesque stereotype of Appalachia, the impoverished backwater of Dogpatch consisted mostly of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, "tarnip" fields, pine trees and "hawg" wallows. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works team designed and built the XP-80 in only 143 days, seven fewer than was required.[4]. (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were almost certainly an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created his irreverent Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same subversive manner. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) " Philosophy is written in this grand bookI mean . "Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman," according to publisher Denis Kitchen. Hilda Terry was the first woman cartoonist to break the gender barrier when the NCS finally permitted female members in 1950. For 18 years of the run of the strip, Abner slipped out of Daisy Mae's marital crosshairs time and time again. The following is a partial list of characteristic expressions that reappeared often in Li'l Abner: Li'l Abner had several toppers on the Sunday page, including[4]. Harvey. Comics historian Don Markstein commented that Capp's "use of language was both unique and universally appealing; and his clean, bold cartooning style provided a perfect vehicle for his creations."[35]. It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953). [29] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. The essential spirit of the division was captured perfectly on July 15, 1955, in an entry from Kelly Johnsons logbook, after a frantic race to ready the U-2 for its inaugural test flight: Airplane essentially completed. ), In the late 1940s, newspaper syndicates typically owned the copyrights, trademarks and licensing rights to comic strips. Capp also excelled at product endorsement, and Li'l Abner characters were often featured in mid-century American advertising campaigns. Warren M. Bodie, journalist, historian, and Skunk Works engineer from 1977 to 1984, wrote that engineering independence, elitism and secrecy of the Skunk Works variety were demonstrated earlier when Lockheed was asked by Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey (later air force brigadier general) to build for the United States Army Air Corps a high speed, high altitude fighter to compete with German aircraft. [44] Journalism Quarterly and Time have both called him "the Mark Twain of cartoonists". The Sunday page debuted six months into the run of the strip. Rounding out the cast were soap opera star Laurette Fillbrandt as Daisy Mae, Hazel Dopheide as Mammy Yokum, and Clarence Hartzell (who was also a prominent actor on Vic and Sade) as Pappy. Designed to help the U.S. and allies leverage emerging technologies to create a resilient multi-domain network. One month after the ATSC and Lockheed meeting, the young engineer Clarence L. Kelly Johnson and other associate engineers hand delivered the initial XP-80 proposal to the ATSC. The demise of KSP in 1999 stopped the reprint series at Volume 27 (1961). I'll never knock his talent."[56]. [7] Some of the group of independent-minded engineers were later involved with the XP-80 project, the prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star. 1,193,227 People also liked Fun Fact Skunk Works Blue Interesting Fact It didnt really matter, since he was firing me about twice a day anyways. Ironing Pappy's trousers fell under her wifely duties as well, although she didn't bother with preliminaries like waiting for Pappy to remove them first. By the time EC Comics published Mad #1, Capp had been doing Fearless Fosdick for nearly a decade. Almost every line was followed by two exclamation marks for added emphasis. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skunk_Works&oldid=1140117891, Lockheed Martin-associated military facilities, Research organizations in the United States, Research and development in the United States, Buildings and structures in Burbank, California, Buildings and structures in Palmdale, California, Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 14:51. Everybody almost dead.. Hours: Monday - Friday: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. "If you have any sense of humor about your strip and I had a sense of humor about mine you knew that for three or four years Abner was wrong. The name skunkworks originates from a cartoon series called " Li'l Abner " by Al Capp. Following the 1989 revival of the Pogo comic strip, a revival of Li'l Abner was also planned in 1990. Building on obscure research that showed radar beams could be diverted by angled triangular panels, the Skunk Works team designed the F-117 Nighthawk. You wanna argue about it? We have invested in developing and demonstrating hypersonic technology for over 30 years.