The biggest casualty of the TV impact was Al Capp’s “Li’l 
Abner.” For eighteen years Al Capp had kept Li’l Abner on the 
verge of matrimony. The sophisticated formula used with his 
characters was the reverse of that employed by the French 
novelist Stendhal, who said, “I simply involve my people in the 
consequences of their own stupidity and then give them brains 
so they can suffer.” Al Capp, in effect, said, “I simply involve my 
people in the consequences of their own stupidity and then 
take away  their brains so that they can do nothing about it.” 
Their inability to help themselves created a sort of parody of all 
the other suspense comics. Al Capp pushed suspense into 
absurdity. But readers have long enjoyed the fact that the 
Dogpatch predicament of helpless ineptitude was a paradigm 
of the human situation, in general.

     With the arrival of TV and its iconic mosaic image, the