"A SLAVE TO MUD MUSHROOMS!"
As a satirist and cartoonist throughout the fifties and sixties, "Li'l Abner" creator Al Capp definitely had his finger on the pulsebeat of American culture. When diet mania and concern about The Flabby American really started to gather steam in the United States, old Al was there to chart his own unique take on the subject. He mocked dieting by creating a new food called mockarooni (made you lose weight alright: so much weight that the wind carried you away!) and regularly fattened the more physically splendorous denizens of Dogpatch, U.S.A., often utilizing another mythical food item, the mud mushroom. Mud Mushrooms were found in a cave, both tasty and addictive and could turn anyone into a Weight Watchers nightmare in a matter of hours. Capp's hero, Abner, wound up being transformed by the mushrooms on at least three separate occasions (talk about yer slow learner!) But for the purposes of this page, let's consider the transformation of Abner's spouse, the perpetually imperiled Daisy Mae, from a 1954 daily strip sequence featuring art assistance by a young Frank Frazetta. Forced to subsist on mud mushrooms after a rival for Abner's affections has imprisoned her in a cave, the buxom-but-slender heroine quickly grows into a picture of fat, if self-pitying, beauty.
Wilson Barbers
Our heroine is thrown into the depths of Duffy's Cavern.
After a week of subsisting on the magically fattening food, Daisy Mae is a transformed woman. Chracteristically, she sobs about it.
Daisy escapes from the cave and takes her baby to the city, where (as is usual for the characters in "Li'l Abner") she's summarily judged and misunderstood by the people all around her. The only food she has is a seemingly inexhaustible basket of mud mushrooms, which she's reluctant to give to her son.
When an obsessive artist sees Daisy Mae on the streets, he recognizes the slender woman within. After locking up and starving her for a week (the weight goes on fast, comes off just as quickly!) our heroine returns to her hourglass shape; an audience of FAs sits back and sighs about what might have been.
Strips Copyright (c) 1994 Al Capp Enterprises
Art taken from Li'l Abner, Volume 20, Kitchen Sink Press
Our heroine is thrown into the depths of Duffy's Cavern.
After a week of subsisting on the magically fattening food, Daisy Mae is a transformed woman. Chracteristically, she sobs about it.
Daisy escapes from the cave and takes her baby to the city, where (as is usual for the characters in "Li'l Abner") she's summarily judged and misunderstood by the people all around her. The only food she has is a seemingly inexhaustible basket of mud mushrooms, which she's reluctant to give to her son.
When an obsessive artist sees Daisy Mae on the streets, he recognizes the slender woman within. After locking up and starving her for a week (the weight goes on fast, comes off just as quickly!) our heroine returns to her hourglass shape; an audience of FAs sits back and sighs about what might have been.