A Bit of Whimsical Instruction

Hope y'all had a decent & happy April Fool . . .

April 1, 1962

It's Not All Beer and Skittles

Sam, cat and gypsy moth exit stage left. Enter Albert.

These current characters have been fun, but I was kind of missing Albert, if not the others, even if it had to be a football story line to bring them back (Kelly's sports stories could get a bit repetitive). 

This strip was a bear to clean up, taking me longer than usual, but it's always swell to get one more strip archived.

September 21, 1969

Nimble Fingers of Patagonian Maidens

This Sunday's strip that I clipped, oh so many years ago, wasn't too bad for bleed-through marks, but as ill luck would have it, it had a fair amount of printing press dirt marring it. To add injury, it was also torn here and there. But thanks to the miracle of photoshop, well, here ya go!

Long Live Kelly, I allus say!

September 14, 1969

Whew, it's good to know these aren't really skinned canines...or at least so sez Seminole Sam...hmm...

Yonder Behold

September 7, 1969

This strip took extra long to clean up due to bleed-through from the other side, but the show must go on. And this show is a little creepy, 'cause of those wigs for dogs. Notice that Sam doesn't deny Beauregard's accusation of skinning his pals.

No other comic strip came close to such dialogue as Kelly gave us.

Below is a pic of a Komondor, descended from an Aftscharka. One wonders if Kelly had a personal history with such a dog.

Fleein' From a Varmint!

No time to say much this week...just this: 

Gleek! Gleek!

August 31, 1969

Oh, Mamie Minded Mama . . .

This strip is more like it, Kelly-wise. And the Okefenokee has a Globe Theatre...how cool is that!

This is the last of the arc that I have lined up, so next week we're on to something else. I'm not sure if I have the strips following this one...I would think I have...but I'm too lazy to go through my stacks to check. Lazy, tired, pooped, exhausted...one of those things. I'm going to bed.

Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday! LLK! And a top of the morning to you, Hun! And hey to A! And cheers to Craig! I appreciate you guys and all the other Pogo-holics!

May 21, 1972

That's What This Country's All About

I don't blame Owl for wondering just what Albert is doing to his unicorn. No other strip in the comic section came close to matching Kelly's Boorawp.

 July 4, 1971

Above, a close-up view of a sort-of complex panel made even MORE complex by having another partially seen Pogo marching behind Seminole Sam. It's the same pose as the seen Pogo, making it seem like it's maybe a paste-up? Anyone have access to a scan of the original art to see what that's all about?

The Squirrel Squats Low in the Hoorah Bush

This is the last page of the arc that's been playing out for weeks. Boom, it just ends here, and the following week a whole new arc started, just like that.

Kelly pays tribute to his fellow comic book cartoonist, Dan Noonan, one of Kelly's early style influences.

Pooed Out

"Scurrilous lagamuffins, poltroons, spalpeens"—woosh, lotta name-callin' goin' on here.

Even if it is a case of mistaken identity, sorta grisly thinking them boys are eating bun's two heads.

Chasin' the Bun-Nappers

We're skipping past two Sundays now, cuz those two had nuttin to do with this storyline. But if ya gotta see em, I already posted em some time ago. They had somethin to do with Easter eggs that hatched into googley birds, or somethin like that.

Anyway, happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!

ARNK

The horse keep on runnin' A-way, and Grundoon keep on sleepin'.

You folk out there keep on readin'?

A Fairy Tale within a Fairy Tale

Rounding out our set of consecutive Adventures of Peter Wheat is issue #29, as always supplied ever-generously by OtherEric of the Digital Comic Museum:

OtherEric:

You're probably sick of me trying vainly to come up with new words to praise Kelly at this point, so for this issue I'll stick to noting how Kelly plays with scale yet again in this one; using larger panels almost every time the beanstalk or the giant is shown, often going for two tiers instead of three. I also like the extreme perspective and oversized lettering on page 11.

Taken as a whole, these issues show Kelly trying all sorts of different things to contrast sizes and I find it amazing to see. It never gets in the way of telling the stories, though—it took me a while to realize it was even there.

I hope you've enjoyed this run of books. I thank Thom again for doing it, and hopefully I (or somebody else) will have more issues to share soon!

Thom:

And thank you OtherEric for the time, expense, and effort of sharing Kelly's Peter Wheat with us. I'll bet we have some more stories soon!

Regarding this story, I'm ready to say that is Seminole Sam, the fox from Pogo's Okefenokee, wandering afield, showing the proximity of Kelly's Whirlds.

That Little Old Invisible Weaver

Okay, this week got some more Peter Wheat comin' up.

In the meantime—Sunday, Kelly Sunday.

Norment, the Invisible Weaver

Hey, sorry I'm not posting much lately, what with one of the hardest deadlines of my career. But this particular deadline wraps up this week and then I can deliver some more great Kelly stuff. But in the meantime I wasn't about to overlook Sunday, Kelly Sunday, and bring you the strip from exactly 45 years ago this minute.

The Prince of Pompadoodle

When I talked with Walt Kelly all those many years ago, a subject that echoes clearly in my mind was his emphasis on the importance of fairy tales to burgeoning minds. With a twinkle in his eye, he bade me to never forsake the tales, as most adults tend to do. He talked of the tales as wonderment that sought to reveal knowledge of the ways of humankind.

Fairy tales may be described in any number of ways*, and by any definition, Walt Kelly's life work was essentially one long fairy tale—including the day to day fables and stories of Pogo and the swampland characters, and of course the Adventures of Peter Wheat, and the scores of traditional fairy tales in his whirled of comic books.

There were times, as below, that he merged his whirleds in an effort to teach us something.

Indeed—Kelly's style, point of view and sense of humor tied all of his work together in a whirled of wonderment that sought to reveal the ways of humankind.

* Think of Kelly as you read of the essence of fairy tales here.

My Own Cosa Nostra

So we've already skipped the strip that I'm missing, just prior to this one. Yet for story continuity it doesn't seem to harm us.

I'm not sure of the significance of Deacon's head being hidden by balloons and Sam peeking out from under one, other than to show us that Kelly is fully aware of how wordy the strip is.

Cosa Nostra, of course, refers to the Mafia, a Sicilian criminal society.

Clandestine Meeting

When I was a kid of eleven, I was clipping and keeping newspaper comics, but not obsessively. If I skipped a week or two here or there, it didn't mean anything to me. So what, I thought, comics will always be around, and new Pogo Sundays will be printed forever. Continuity? Completism? What are those things?

In short, I'm missing some pages at the early end of my Pogo Sundays. What you see below is a storyline that is 'already in progress'. But so what? We're lucky to see this much. Amidst the seven pages of the arc that you will see, there will be a couple more Sundays missing. Again, so what? The story still flows, thanks to Kelly's genius of 'running in place' with his stories.

I so want to get in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, and go back to have a talk with my younger self. There are many things I would tell him/me. Among other things, I would say, "be more aware, pay attention to what you think is unimportant, cuz really, ultimately those things will be important. Don't take anything for granted". And of course I'd tell him/me to go out and buy as many Action #1's that he could find.

Realize that when this Sunday strip was printed, John F. Kennedy was still alive (though only with 2 and 1/2 weeks left to his life). The world felt young and optimistic, even to a boy of 11.