Sunday, November 10, 2013

A Shatterpated Ninnyhammmer

Wow, here's an action-filled Sunday strip — once again Kelly not scrimping on bounteous detail.

May 30, 1971

GENERAL UPDATE:
Our friend-in-Kelly that goes by commentary name of Alimentary has worked with our esteemed F-i-K, Hun, to give us English-only readers a break in reading the French dailies that Michel Francois sent over and that I posted a while ago. I will post that workup sometime this week, if the gods are willing and the creeks don't rise.

Looks like we've got a little Kelly community thing going on here.

13 comments:

  1. Although not made public yet, I'll withhold comment on that French Demo project. I do want to thank F-i-K and Hun for the absolutely essential help on it, as well as Thomas for the original inspirational material to attack with Photoshop and an obsessive-compulsive disorder!

    As for the comic today, Albert is still making the statement "Funny how a good-lookin' fella look handsome in anything he throw on!" true as usual!

    - (A)

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  2. Ha ha ha, I somehow read F-i-K as a separate entity there. Poltergeists make up the principal type of spontaneous material manifestations!

    - (A)

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  3. Very singleminded ladybug lady, this (except for her name-calling)
    Is there any expression in your language that could have sparked Kelly's wild imagination to create "Shatterpated Ninnyhammmer" ?

    (flab-berg-hasted) Hun

    Oh, and THANKS, Thom!

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  4. Hun, there is 'addle-minded' in our language and 'addlepated'—addled meaning confused; pate referring to the head. Ninny is an expression for a foolish one. A hammer has a 'head'. Leave it to Kelly to put it all together.

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  5. Alimentary — That poltergeist quote from pup dog is one of Kelly's finest moments!

    I shouldn't have capitalized the 'f' in f-i-K. But everyone here is a friend-in-Kelly.

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    Replies
    1. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a depiction of the 'poltergeists' comic anywhere online, but I recall the priceless eyebrow-raised expressions of the faces of the nearby characters who were witness to pup-dog's epic non-sequitur.

      Also, I corrected a typo on page 2 of the french version. und=and

      http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/9816/isvr.png

      I thought about correcting 'wordwide' in there but you never know if it's a typo or Pogoese if it seems faintly witty and relevant!

      - (A)

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  6. I'll post some Kelly's in semaphore langage or
    in Braille versions ... ?
    :D

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    Replies
    1. I'll do Esperanto and Klingon!

      ~Craig

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  7. This one's chock full o' Kelly goodness!
    - "Funerals & Laundry Neatly Done!" I do love me some silly Kelly advertising.
    - A rare Sunday cameo from Ol' Mouse!
    - The worm immediately taking the lead in the race - great little subtle detail!
    - Notice that the little black bird under the title popped up again - also hanging out around the title - on the 3/12/72 strip, posted by Thom on 8/11/13. Just goes to show how consistent/attentive to detail Kelly was, even at this late stage.

    ~Craig

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  8. When Kelly first started what would become what we know as Pogo in Animal Comics, it must have been fairly successful because there’s at least a few plausibly deniable attempts to follow it.

    Although certainly Disney’s ‘Song of the South’ (1946) has a heritage in much older stories (Selby Kelly noted Walt was inspired by Uncle Remus stories himself), it's plausibly deniable that it could have come from noticing Kelly’s success with “Br’er Gator and Br’er Possum”. It’s interesting to note that Kelly wisely decided to give Bumbazine a ticket to Atlanta early on, where the other human beans live - Disney is still in a little hot water from “Song of the South” to this day.

    This wouldn’t have been the only plausibly deniable attempt to capture some of Kelly’s mysterious charms. Jack Kirby about a year after Song of the South, came out with Lockjaw the Alligator:

    (http://timebulleteer.wordpress.com/tag/lockjaw-the-alligator/)

    And you thought early Albert was a tad bit homely.

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  9. Cause no one tends to look back at earlier entries once they're up to date, here's a heads (or tails) up for the regulars. I reconstructed the landscape version of Aha! Ahee! Ahoo! from a foundling panel. Enjoy the tongue-grabbin' goodness!

    http://imageshack.com/a/img703/4886/n0pr.png

    - (A)

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  10. One thing Walt Kelly did better than any other cartoonist I've ever been aware of was chaos. Here he takes three plot lines, each set up in a single panel, and throws them together hilariously!

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  11. OMFG, I just looove that lil' cartoon in your post. So good! Damn.

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