Hi folks! Back (way back) when brang new Pogo strips would come delivered to my door every Sunday, I would almost take for granted that such a thing would go on and on forever. But during the period reflected in this strip I had a hint, just a hint, that Kelly's artwork was starting to diminish—the richness of detail was starting to dry up. At the same time I was distracted by real world details (such as at the time of this strip, it was my first month in basic training), so I didn't think much about it.
I didn't know at the time that Kelly had diabetes and was feeling the consequences of the illness. I empathize with the task of working while ill.
LLK
March 26, 1972
Thom,
ReplyDeleteyour demands re quality of comic strips must have been very demanding then. Myself cannot find fault with this one.
But then Kelly (LLK!) as you may have noticed could not do wrong for me.
Thanks for posting!
Hun
It's a strange feeling knowing what you're looking at is a great cartoonist, lyricist, and cause-fighter slipping away from us, easily 20 years too early. It makes these last pieces treasured, but melancholic. Especially in retrospect knowing how irreplaceable he turned out to be some 40 years later.
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The art, while more workmanlike than Kelly at his best, is still so much stronger than 98% of the artists who have worked in the medium. The poses aren't quite as gleefully rendered and the backgrounds not as detailed as in the glory days, but even in illness Kelly was working harder than his peers. Most comic strip artists seem consumed with churning out a product as quickly as possible. Kelly was all about quality, up til the end.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering what Fantagraphics plans to do when it reaches the late 1972 period. Some of those strips (starting around October) are painful to look at. Seeing those strips is almost as depressing as actually have to stand there watching Kelly in physical pain. And then in 1973 the strip was mostly reprints, allegedly with a few original strips here and there when Kelly was well enough (I've never seen any of these '73 originals). Finally, just a few weeks before Kelly passed, Don Morgan drew a few weeks based on scripts written by Kelly. Then of course Selby took over. It will be interesting to see where Fantagraphics decides to cut things off. While I would like ALL of Kelly's strips (even the sickly ones) included for completeness' sake, that's a pretty grim way to end such a joyful series.
~Craig
I went searching morbidly for this, and discovered the 'bull' label brings up the infamous Oct 29 Sunday of 1972. The typical precision is missing, and the characters are fairly frantic and distorted. You can practically feel him trying so hard to make us - and probably himself at the time - smile. I grimly find myself wondering what the last comic he did was.
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The humiliating tag-out that Churchy's pygal suffers really makes this comic for me.
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That last panel has some solid art in it. I think the washed-out coloring subliminally makes this strip look weaker than it actually is art-wise. (What is up with that pale-yellow Porkypine?!).
Delete~Craig