Ful Wys is He that can Hymselven Knowe

Madcap mayhem. Slapstick. Keystone Kops. Whimsical wordplay. Awesome art. This Sunday strip has it all. Plus it's plain funny.

What a beautiful tableau. These prisoner frogs slay me:

Below is a scene you just don't see every day, any day. 'Unwilling slaves to destiny'. . . cracks me up!

With all this good stuff for you to savor, I must take my leave. Once again I've got HORRIBLE deadlines and can't spare any more time to blog till I'm done. See you on Sunday!

Cheerful Charlies to the Rescue!

The plot thickens . . .
Yay, Pogo on a pogo stick . . .

Bully Billy! Belly Up!

I tol' ya. Non-stop, rip-roaring action!

Speed Demon Refugee

How much more timely can you get for Starbucks patrons than having Albert displayin' a concealed weapon?

And how much more action can you get than Beauregard firing on Albert?

Piddy Piddy Piddy

Okay, now things are startin' to get lively . . .

Yep, piddy lively.

Sorry About That, Chief

What's so rare as a day in June? Mr. Miggle not coming out on top of the situation.

One of the catch phrases of this period of time was "Sorry about that, Chief," which of course was from the hit TV show Get Smart.

Tread water for a bit, the action is just over the horizon.

You Turkles Lives for Billions

We're still in granny gear here folks, hang in there.

Rocketin' On to 250

It's starting out a bit slow, but believe me, this arc will get funnier.

Ah, the Hammering Hearts

This redoubtable arc, The Oldest Man in the World Contest, is going to lead into some funny stuff.

So hang around, but also be patient, as I'm still on horrible deadline status, so it might take me two or three days between posts. I hope I don't keel over from working day and night and then-some.

HAPPY SPRINGTIME

'bout time it got here, sez I.

A Funny Thing on the Way to the Forum

Once again, I am completely overcome by deadlines. I have to work day and night for the rest of the week. I will resume posting on Sunday. Then I think we'll begin one of Kelly's amazing Sunday arcs that I've been holding back until now.

In the meantime, here's Owl as Nero, a funny thing on the way to the forum. Excelsior!

Waw! Who Wants to be a Turtle?

A continuation from the last strip, the 2nd strip that I personally rescued from the trash heap (there was no recycling done by ANYbody back in those days—heck, people even burned their trash in their backyard incinerators!).

The printing registration is pretty bad on this one, as is the bleed-through from Archie on the other side. But it's part of the archives of Kelly's Whirled, so here it is.

A Mislaid Egg

This is the earliest Pogo Sunday that I clipped from the paper, back in (wait for it) May of nineteen sixty-three. Good gosh, that's 6 months before Kennedy's assassination. I have no specific memory of culling this piece of ephemera, but seeing it opens a flood-gate of childhood emotions, of wonder and fascination of all things four-color. All these years later, the boy that I was is still within the man I am.

Only the Lone

Sometimes I get confuddled by Kelly's verse and feel like I'm pretty dense.

But then I read some of Kelly's 'explanations', and feel better that he confirms that it's all a bunch of stuff and nonsense. Below, from Songs of the Pogo.

Dedicated to all you Porky fans:

The entwined tree is gorgeous as are most all of Kelly's trees.

That Fierce Bandit in the Copse

This strip is from the very next day, yet it refers to the fierce bandit as if we had witnessed the encounter. Well, we didn't. And you would think that with the camaraderie that these two have, we would see them again. But we don't. The next daily jumps back to Owl's school, and we don't see these two fine fellows again (at least not in the remaining months of sequential strips that I have. Kelly's stories and characters meander where they will, sometimes with no rhyme or reason.

An' Waldo, the Watchfish

This strip has nothing to do with our current storyline, but it is the next consecutive date. I can see why the book reprints would either drop some strips or rearrange them into story groups.

A Lion! A Alligator!

Sometimes I forget that Albert really is supposed to be an alligator--he's such a lovable doofus. Kelly had such a way of blending human bean characteristics with animal physiology. Here the lion is close to the size of a beaver, stands with human aplomb, runs like Barney Google—and yet seems entirely believable as a character.

Kelly fits so much substance (a full tree house) and action (the lion has run 10 yards) into these fairly tiny panels, and yet still has room to breathe.

Stout Heart!

All That Dangormley

Or Should I Obey and Disobey?

Everyday we all have little dilemmas.

Bagstabbin' Blink-Eyed Door

What a Exciting Scene!

Me an' My Bay-Bee

Isn't there just something, indefinable, but really evident of the special quality of Kelly's artwork? Looking at this strip. . . the facial expressions, of the lamb in the 2nd panel and of Li'l' Awry in the last panel, the characters feel somehow real, even though we know they're only cartoons. I feel comforted by looking in on the characters in Kelly's Whirled. Most other comic strips have a superficial quality, the art seems manufactured.

Oh gosh, I'm not explaining this right. Somehow I need to come up with the words that communicate this. Anyone want to give it a whirl, if you even get a hint of what I'm saying here? Many many of you feel Kelly's art and style is more than just good art--what is it, why is it that it reaches us on an emotional level? This is something I just have to find the words for.

Boy, that lamb really has the patter down of a promotional campaign.

The Month of March

OK, to be timely I could've/should've/would've posted this grouping of strips at the beginning of March. But I didn't, and it's not gonna hurt anybody that I'm doing it now. And it's better now, maybe, then, oh, say August. But even if I had waited 'til then, so what, right? My mission here is to jump all over the place—Kelly here, Kelly there. Still, it's not even the middle of March, so this is sort of timely, not that I need to be, mind you.

This is the first of ten consecutive strips. They're old and brittle (like me), so please don't mind the yellowing newsprint.

I Hail You Who Holler Whoo Whoo

A bit of who's on first . . .

Below, the original art for this strip, demonstrating the 'extra' (6th) panel, as well as how the 5th panel was altered. The original art was in the same format as the printed strip, so why in the whirled didn't the paper just print it that way?

Such beautiful art for just a regular ol' run-of-the-mill strip.

A Dread Plague of Beatniks

Human Beans appearing in the Pogo strip was a plenty rare event.

At the time of this strip in 1965, Hippies had barely been heard of, outside of a vague use of the term for people who were 'hip'. 'Beatniks' was the appellation and social stereotype applied to young people with guitars and lots of hair. It was the beginning of the end of an era, and the social revolution to come was just as bewildering to Kelly, I think, as it was to most people of his generation.

Marty Allen, the comedian whose tagline was a big 'HELLO DERE' was REALLY popular at that time, having the distinction of performing with his comedy partner Steve Rossi on the Ed Sullivan show on the same night as the Beatles, not just once but twice.

Best Laid Eggs of Mice Nor Men

This is the follow-up Sunday to the last post. These two Sundays were sort of stand-alones in the middle of a long arc, of which I will post sometime soon.

The quality of the press runs at this time were somewhat spotty (literally), so I'm spending a bit more time than usual trying to get the cleanest scans I can. In my opinion, this era marks the beginning of the decline of quality that newspapers suffered, lasting to this day—40 years later.

Retired Eggs

While we're on our little theme of birds ala Kelly . . .

And a little closer look at them sprats . . .

Free as a Bird

While we're on the subject of Kelly's distinctive birds . . .

Rather Dr. Seussian, don't you think?

Audible Boy Birdwatchers Society

Kelly could put character into any kind of critter.

Audible Boy Birdwatchers Society - 2

Which, of course, is a take on the Audubon Society.

A Long Winter's Wait is O'er!

A 1971 strip, starting to wear a little thin, as Kelly was ill, but still fun stuff. Churchy is wearing his pirate hat of the old days, Pogo hisself getting duller and duller, and Albert allus a loose cannon.

The Magic Garden

Kelly's comic book stories seem to be showing up all over the 'net, but at the risk of duplicating someone's efforts, I like to scan 'em large and in natural color from my collection.

I very rarely have purchased old comics from dealers, having inherited them, or bought them new off the spinner. But this comic was an exception. Some years ago I talked with a dealer who was on tour with an antique show at a mall, and I told him of my interest in some of Kelly's fairy tale comics, and gave him my address to contact me if he found any on my want list. Whoa, just two weeks later a large envelope arrived with this comic, beautifully packaged. The dealer wrote that if I didn't want it, just send it back, or if I did want it, I could send a check (for a very fair price). I was dumbfounded that a dealer could be so trusting, and to keep that trust, of course I sent a check immediately.

Fairy Tale Parade #50 (Four Color Series) — 1944

Back Cover