Good morning!
The middle panel ("She's manly?") is the extra panel that wouldn't have been in the tabloid format. And dig that elefront in the first panel—no reason for it to be there at all, 'cept that this is Kelly's Whirled, and what a cheerful place it is.
October 12, 1969
so many hearts! Could have been a Febr. 14 - strip...
ReplyDeleteHope you had many Valentine-offers.
Thank you, THB!
Hun
Hun, you are a romantic fool. I like that in a person.
ReplyDeleteMany offers, but only accepted my wife's, the wise thing to do I think.
Do Germans do Valentine's kind of stuff?
One aspect of Kelly's work, particularly his later work, is the inclusion of characters based on public / political figures. So I suppose that it is appropriate to point out to the younger audience, who may be getting exposed to these strips for the first time, that the dog like character in this sequence is a parody of J. Edgar Hoover the long time head of the FBI. And he was a very powerful and frightening figure in his day.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of those new-fangled "globalized" customs and is celebrated mostly by florists.
ReplyDeleteFor She (who must be obeyed) and me, every year it is occasion for discussion: did we first meet on Saturday (not: Friday), Febr. 13 or was it already Sunday, Febr. 14?
We may be excused for not remembering with exactitude: It was carnival and we were forgetting to look at timekeeping gadgets.
Those were the times, my friend,....
Hun
J.P.—you are right that this character somewhat parodies Hoover, but not by his appearance. For that, Kelly did a dead-on caricature of Hoover in the daily strips, also as a bulldog if my memory serves correctly, I think that was when he was skewering Agnew and Nixon. I've lost the strips and the book of that period, but it was a sharp and prickly effort as I recall.
ReplyDeleteOh indeed, Hun, those were the times. I have exactitude for my first encounter with my sweetie—the date and the place, though like you, timekeeping was far from my mind. And our anniversary is slightly easy to remember, as our marriage occurred on a Friday, the 13th of that month (and of course Churchy would be horrified at that). We were defying the fates of superstition and have survived 25 years of the damndest roller coaster ride of our lives.
ReplyDeleteThom,
ReplyDeletere: Kelly and Hoover
1972, and the Simon and Schuster book was called (would you believe it, THE Kelly quote)'We have met the enemy and he is us' (cost $1.95...Those were the days...)
They are all there: Hoover, Agnew, Mitchell with his Taps service, (Nixon only off-screen) and the National Security computer that keeps blowing up incessantly if not more often
I'm feeling tempted to scan it
Hun
PS. She and I are also very sure of the place and the occasion. But: Was it before or after midnight that the arrow struck (48 years ago)
Hun, that is a book that has escaped from my zoo. Which is the one where Nixon is a teapot, or a spider, or some such? Scans are always welcome here, but don't feel obligated, especially if it takes too much time or presents danger to the book.
ReplyDeleteMidnight is the bewitching hour and you two were bothered and bemildred, understandably. For me, it was just one-sided on my side for a few days until I decided to pursue the matter, that is to say, the She.
Thom,
ReplyDeleteone of the few Pogo reprint books I'm lucky to own is titled 'Pogo's Body Politic'.
S&S, copyright 1976 by the estate of Walt Kelly. It contains strips from 1970, 71 and 72.
(Cannot expect much continuity there , more whirledness...But, so what?!)
The very first sequence has the flea and (her?) reluctant hyena lover going to the spider-teapot-bushy-eyebrowed-N.-lookalike's dungeon for advice.
(In "real life" this started with the Feb. 5, '71 newspaper strip)
Is this the book you are referring to?
(The bulldog also makes a showing, as does Ripe-Dan Winkle and Senator Bulfrog)
Hun
re: "We have met..."-book. The book is 1972, but (at least some of) the strips are 1971
re: scanning
I could send you the microfilm-archived orig. newspaper strips (without scanning problems). But for a graphically bent human bean these REALLY give NO viewing pleasure.
Might be nice for old times' sake and if you cannot wait all those years till Fantagraphics gets to the 1970s.
Thanks, Hun! Actually, those years were my least favorite Kelly years (though still far and above other comics of the time), and that's why I let the book escape without much todo. So, thanks anyway on the scans for now!
ReplyDelete