More than 50 years ago America was taken by storm when Al Capp introduced the Shmoo into his comic strip Lil' Abner; in the words of Lifemagazine, the nation was "Shmoo-struck." The adorable squash-shaped character was so popular it immediately spawned a massive merchandising craze: there were Shmoo dolls, Shmoo watches-even Shmoo ashtrays and Shmoo fishing lures. More than a hundred Shmoo clubs sprung up around the country-including a "Society for the Advancement of the Shmoo"-and inflatable Shmoos managed to reach German soil as part of the Berlin Air Lift. It was, as a reviewer in The New York Timescommented, "a cultural event of enormous significance." Now, Al Capp's two graphic novels featuring the Shmoo- The Life and Times of the Shmooand The Return of the Shmoo-are finally back in print, together for the first time in The Complete Life and Times of the Shmoo. Soon after Lil' Abner discovers a colony of Shmoos, it looks like the citizens of Dogpatch have it made: the charming little critters can lay eggs, give milk, and be broiled into steaks-all Grade A-while their eyes make exquisite suspender buttons, their whiskers fine-grade toothpicks, and their hides the softest leather. The Schmoos provide for every need, and the frisky creatures reproduce at such a prodigious rate that no one even fights over them! Soon, however, America's captains of industry wage war on The Schmoo to protect their profits. Will Lil' Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, and the rest of America choose the Shmoo-or the status quo? The Complete Life and Times of the Shmoois Al Capp and his incisive social criticism at his best, making it clear why John Steinbeck once hailed the cartoonist as "the best satirist since Laurence Sterne."