The comic book art is by Al Hubbard, a good choice for emulating Kelly's style. You may recognize his style a bit from the Mary Jane and Sniffles series in the Warner Bros franchise of comics. For completist's sake, I've included the covers, front and back, though they truly stray from Kelly.
Peter Wheat News #44:
Below, as another bonus, OtherEric has included this full-page back cover to FourColor #474, showcasing Al Hubbard's work on Mary Jane & Sniffles, and REALLY demonstrating the influence that Walt Kelly had on his work, in the composition, characterizations and artistic rendering.
As always, this material is brought to us with generosity by OtherEric of the Digital Comic Museum. And in fact, here are some words of introduction by him:
Here are two more issues of Peter Wheat News, this time not by Kelly, but by his replacement team of Del Connell and Al Hubbard. As a bonus, these happen to be consecutive issues, 43 and 44, so we can see how the three-parters in News tied together, as well as a look at how the books looked once Kelly left. While the new creators obviously don't live up to the standard that Kelly set, I don't think anybody really could. They do better than most people would, I think — the series remains charming and entertaining, and far better than the average 50s comic book fare. The #43 has been shared as a CBZ before this, but the #44 is new.
I wanted to give a little background on Connell and Hubbard, but ran into difficulty. Connell may have written some of the late Kelly issues of Peter Wheat, and I believe he was on staff at Western. Other than that I really don't know anything about him or his work. Hubbard, on the other hand, I could write about for pages. 99% of what I would write would just be variations of "I love Hubbard's work on Mary Jane & Sniffles", without much real content beyond that. Maybe some other time—it really is one of my favorite series and in my opinion better than any other comics based on the Warner Brothers cartoons by orders of magnitude.
Peter Wheat News #43:
Peter Wheat News #44:
Below, as another bonus, OtherEric has included this full-page back cover to FourColor #474, showcasing Al Hubbard's work on Mary Jane & Sniffles, and REALLY demonstrating the influence that Walt Kelly had on his work, in the composition, characterizations and artistic rendering.
you have to look close to see anything different--charlie
ReplyDeleteI'll chip in some kind words about Hubbard's superb work on SCAMP during the Dell and Gold Key years. Truly, one of American Disney comics' unappreciated treasures.
ReplyDeleteChris
Oh gosh Chris, you're right of course—I totally forgot the Scamp stuff. I think he also did the Peter Pan comic book adaptation, which I'm thinking of posting on Pictorial Arts.
ReplyDeleteHis work on the Peter Pan comic was exemplary! I was seeing one of the drawings from it, probably of Mr. Darling, and thinking it was from Lady and the Tramp, but now I recall it better. If I'd read this entry first, I wouldn't have had much to comment on at the other one. All my bases were covered, pretty much.
ReplyDeleteOne question: Is there a way to see the images one after the other without returning to the previous page? I'm lazy, and there's often an easier way to do things than the ones I know about.