Joe Palooka, an American comic strip from which subsequent usages are derived
However, while there is no doubt that Capp did a substantial amount of work on Joe Palooka for several months, as an artist and probably also to some degree a writer, comics historians Denis Kitchen and Michael Schumacher have recently made a case that there is no way of knowing whether Capp or Fisher invented the hillbillies, in their biography Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (Bloomsbury USA, 2013).
Kirkwood is married to Joyce Kirkwood (1980–present) and was married to Cathy Downs (1952–55) (divorced), who starred with him in The Joe Palooka Story TV series from 1954 to 1955.