This post (and really, posts to come) are dedicated to my good cyber-friend Loren, who, in our correspondence, was instrumental in convincing me to return to regular blogging here on Whirled of Kelly. She is a young art & animation student, whose love of animation finds great inspiration in the art and writing of Kelly.
Her enthusiasm for Kelly's cartooning genius; her appreciation of my curation of this site; her encouragement of the benefit to art students and pros, animation students and pros, and enthusiasts of all kinds has persuaded me to keep up with the hard work of sourcing, scanning, cleaning and curating Kelly's wonderful work.
I've written previously of my (and other people's) recurring night-time dream of wandering into an old bookstore and finding a Pogo book that I had never seen before, though I thought I had completed my collection long ago.
In reality, that dream came true just a few years ago.
I had not made a checklist of Pogo books to check off, but I really thought that I had them all. So when I saw The Pogo Sunday Book on a dusty book shelf, I did an actual double take and poked myself to see if this was one of those dreams.
I don't think the book is all that rare, but I've not seen one before or since the day that I grabbed it up to pay only a few dollars for. It's mostly a reprint of some of the earliest Pogo Sunday strips, heavily edited and in black and white. It was only very recently that I read the intro page by Kelly to realize that the first 10 pages of the book was a 'new' story of 1956 vintage. Looking at it now, I wonder if it was slated to be a story in the Pogo comic books, or 'just' one that Kelly and his assistant George Ward did just for this book.
And it's funny. I haven't had that recurring dream since.
I show the story here for all of you, and especially for Loren!
The back cover portrays the iconic portrait of Pogo
Loren, we owe you greatly for encouraging Thomas to return to his personal own private curation of Walt Kelly's world.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Hey, dude. It's been a while since we've chatted on Livestream and Twitter but I've been so busy with my new surprise Paint drawing for Tumblr and DA for all the Pogo and Gon e'choo fans to stare at, hahax) Anyways I too had this exact copy for exactly a year now and I still love it pieces. There's no way I'm giving this up anytime soon ^^
DeleteAww, thank you so much for your kind words. I'm absolutely flattered! I pulled an all-nighter to finish a big project two days ago and passed out the moment I came home from classes before I could check here, so sorry for being late. But thank you for continuing this blog. Every post here are wonderful bits and pieces of inspiration and encouragement. I check it almost daily now whenever my schedule permits.
ReplyDeleteBut when all said and done, thank you for being so considerate of the ever broke and busy art student millennials like me who want to view this work but have difficulty saving time and money for the books. Both on the other blog and this one.
This is probably my all time favorite cover of the Pogo books. It's such a great energetic, gorgeous composition and I might have a thing for purple.
But man, that bear skin is HORRIFYING. I don't even want to know where Albert got it . . .
hahaha, good point about the bear skin! It's maybe one of Barnstable's relatives. yicko.
DeleteAre you kidding me? I have this exact same collection that I purchased online a year ago and I just love it to pieces ^^
ReplyDeleteIt's all your fault. Well, really it's Walt Kelly's. I am sitting here in my cubicle at work gasping and guffawing with tears running down my face from choking on even more laughter, and mo co-workers are starting to look at me funny.
ReplyDeleteNobody does chaos like Kelly did. The gradual accumulation of absurdities into a tableau of ridiculous proportions is unmatched.
This one has a special significance to me. Back in the early sixties my parents used to be occasional rally drivers for a Jaguar dealership in Atlanta. They would race in an XK-140 or an early E-type (or more often in an Austin Healey 3000 MkII, but that's not germane to this anecdote). Knowing this, an artist friend of theirs made them a present. He made a wood-block print on thick Japanese rice-paper of Porky and his cat in the last panel with the legend "Wanna take a ride in my Jaguar?"
Thank you for posting this. Thank you, thank you, thank you!