Before legendary artist Frank Frazetta became an American institution for his lush paintings, he was drawing muscular hillbillies and scantily clad women for an earlier American institution: the comic strip LiÂ’l Abner, which boasted 60 million readers daily. From 1954 till 1961 Frazetta toiled as a ghost for Al Capp, the most famous and successful cartoonist of his era. Except for a brief 1954 dailies sequence (when Frazetta drew himself as "Frankie the Biker" in a send-up of Marlon BrandoÂ’s contemporary motorcycle film The Wild Ones) FrazettaÂ’s energy was focused on the LiÂ’l Abner Sunday strips.

For the first time ever, these gorgeous full-color Sundays are being collected! Each quarterly volume will contain an introduction and extensive annotations by LiÂ’l Abner expert Denis Kitchen. This volume features The Bald Iggle (from CappÂ’s Shmoo and Kigmy school of creatures with social messages), Loverboynik (a thinly disguised Liberace) and Milton the Masked Martian (an early superhero parody) as well as Indian princess Minnie Mustache, Moonbeam McSwine, The Tigress, Daisy Mae Yokum and Gloria Van Wellbilt as only Frank Frazetta can draw them!!

Al CappÂ’s LiÂ’l Abner: The Frazetta Sundays Volume 1 is available May 28 for the retail priceof $18.95