Sunday, December 27, 2015

A Lot to be Said for a Year What Ends with Christmas

I like the half-page 3-tiered format.

And just so you don't panic, 11-22 and 11-29 
have been shown here previously. 

December 6, 1970

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Willin' to Give My Heart for My Fellows

Thanks again to those of you who spoken up with your interest for Whirled of Kelly, even some of you normally quiet folk. That really keeps me going.

Meanwhile, enter Albert, stage left.

November 15, 1970

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Make Mine with Cheese!

Boatloads of thanks to those of you who have spoken up to let me know that you are still out there and bolstering our motto/mission of 'Long Live Kelly!' You guys make it all worth while!

November 8, 1970

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Only You-Know-Who can Make a Fish

Anybody still out there? Seems like I'm doing all this fer myself.

November 1, 1970

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Thanks and Giving

That address is not valid, but the sentiment and art ARE!

I miss Walt Kelly and new work of his all these years later...
but thankful he was around at all!


Monday, November 23, 2015

On to Johannesburg!

Three or four times over the past day I've tried posting this strip, but each time there were technical difficulties. I'm hoping this will make it through this time. So far, so good.

Today we learn Howland Owl's middle name. 

Otherwise, the usual foolishments.


October 25, 1970

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Can't Execute the Green Dog Razzle Dazzle Hipper Super Dip and Fade Away

This Sunday strip isn't the most interesting, or graphically pleasing of Kelly's work, but it's the start to a run of strips that get a bit better. Hang in there.

October 18, 1970

Sunday, November 8, 2015

What a Ordeal!

I only had time to do some color correction on this weeks's Sunday strip, no time to fix the bleed through from the back side. But I'd rather post now than later, so here ya go (ooo, all the way from 1964, from my earliest era of cutting and saving strips).

March 1, 1964

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Peace and Harmony is Our Fightin' Words!

Sorry to be late in posting here. Halloween festivities kept me busy 'til all hours — my fa-vor-ite frivolity.

Here is more Christmas Carol frivolity, one of Kelly's fa-vor-ite themes every year.

December 15, 1968

Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Spell of Music

This gathering of characters makes for a great display of cartooning.

And Kelly's understanding of bagpipes is displayed in pretty accurate sound effects (SZKWACK PWEERP) as well as Porkypine's recognition of a Dudelsak. In reality spelled slightly differently, the Dudelsack was once the most widespread bagpipe in use in Europe. Becoming almost extinct, the Dudelsack today has many players . . . including Pogo!

December 8, 1968

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Big Game

This is Kelly still thinking in terms of comic books with their one page wordless gags. The gag, meant for children, is mild and a variation of a Kelly favorite theme — the little guy besting the big one. 

August 24, 1952

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Not Quite Dry As a Bone

More sweetness and quietude, from 1952, one of my favorite years in more ways than one. Pup Dog never took on humanish behavior, to his credit. Beauregard, well, he vacillated.

August 31, 1952

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Nobody Lives By Bread By His Own Self

Another strip that I cut out from my Sunday paper all the way back in 1964, waiting 51 years just to be shared with you. Life is weird.

February 23, 1964

Sunday, September 27, 2015

All Big Fishes Get Away

Simple and sweet—sometimes Kelly had to take a breather from the hoo-roar of Albert and all the other numbskull shenanigans of the swamp, and what better way than with Pogo and Rackety Coon Chile...

Another scan from my dwindling stash of strips that I clipped decades ago, never dreaming that I'd get to one day share it with you, wherever you are in the world.

July 27, 1969

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Speechless

Every once in a while Kelly would drop in a wordless filler strip, looking much like his comic book art, and in fact may have been recycled from the idea pile that outlived the Dell comic book. Simplistic stuff, but Kelly makes the art delicious.

October 5, 1952

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Whompin' Out a Tune

Jes' the simple art of Albert whompin' out a tune is funny.


Sunday, September 13, 2015

Gran'pa Pearlie Passleboo 'Possum

Another Sunday strip from my stash o' strips that I collected as a young sprat. Sure, it's just talking heads, but of more interest to my boyhood aesthetics than the rest of the Sunday funnies.

February 16, 1964

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Replete with Nuances an' Subtle Undershadings of Philosophy

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












Sunday, September 6, 2015

Edded Owgga Air Add Leggo Ooms!

This week we have a bonus of TWO early Sunday strips! 

If you are a dedicated Pogophile you have prolly seen these, as they appear in the lovely Fantagraphics reprint series. 

But I have a goal of posting as many strips that I can of the Kelly oeuvre in my lifetime, whether they've been seen a lot or not,  and people relatively new to Pogo get to see a bunch of this stuff for the very first time! Yay!

 February 22, 1953

March 1, 1953

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Jump an' Throstle with Joy

This is another Easter Sunday strip that has avoided being posted until now. It's silly and sweet. I do believe that Lulu Red-Ride-An'-Hood is really Li'l Awry who played a big part in the dailies around this time of 1965 —wow— fifty years ago!


Saturday, August 29, 2015

Ground Zero

Albert takes a beautifully executed dive from ground zero.


Friday, August 28, 2015

SPLASH

Even a simple splash has Kelly written all over it.


So Shirty and Shove

I would like to think that Miz Beaver had finally found her feller, but inter-species relationships are difficult to maintain. I love the composition of this panel with its half circle aura and the obtuse poetry, seen (heard) here out of context.


Thursday, August 27, 2015

Homey Couple

Yep, these two look like they could be a nice homey couple.


Attention from Menfolk

Miz Beaver doesn't get a lot of (good) attention from menfolk, so when Ripe-Dan Winkle offers a valentine, she ignores his ripe 200 year old odor and plies comfort to him.



Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A Charming Old Guy

Another of Kelly's multitudinous characters, Ripe-Dan Winkle charms his way into Miz Beaver's good graces. Really, a charming OLD guy.


Line and Brush Work

Ya never know what these boys are up to. Even in context, a person sometimes has to wonder what's going on in the Okefenokee. I constantly marvel at Kelly's line and brush work, making things solid, yet light. And again, detail such as the the bird finial is unnecessary, yet delightful.


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Positivate Their Heart-Felt Desires

As has been noted in the comments, a close study of Kelly's artwork is almost a tutorial in cartooning, or at least uber inspirational for cartoonists and animators. As such, we'll also attempt to gather and assemble material detailing Kelly's characters, which were numerous.

These Senator Bulfrog drawings are from 1969, and I don't know if it's a caricature of a specific senator or of the political species itself. Senator Everett Dirksen comes to mind, but he died a couple of months before these usages and didn't specifically resemble Bulfrog, except in ways of bombastic behavior. 

Kelly gave Bulfrog a classic treatment with his own sort of flowery word balloons, as politicians tend to inflict upon us. 


And it's always lovely to examine Kelly original art . . .

November 4, 1969

Monday, August 24, 2015

Launching



I'm relaunching a feature, starting today, showcasing individual panels and vignettes of Kelly art. These will be fairly large, fairly high-res so as to concentrate purely on the wonderbobbleness of Kelly's delineations. These kind of posts will help to randomly fill the vacuum between regular posts.

Along the way we can peer into the details that we sometimes miss when the dialogue distracts us . . . such as that little bird investigating the lunch basket.

You'll see the art in pretty good detail when you click it.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Merry Easter, Folks!

Welcome back to the Whirled of Kelly! I've missed being here, but life sometimes just gets in the way of living.

A special cyber-friend has encouraged me (well, threatened me) to revive my habit of posting Pogo Sundays on Sunday and whatever other ephemera that smacks of Kelly goodness that I can slip in. 

Okay then. 

Easter in August, why not. Kelly's holidays were haphazard anyway.

April 11, 1971

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Blog o' Kelly, Pile o' Pogo

Fair warning to interested parties: I will be returning to new posts on this blog o' Kelly, starting on Sunday this.

What you see here is just a fraction of my pile o' Pogo. 

No bonfires, please.


Sunday, March 1, 2015

. . . Aplomb!

Sorry to miss some postings here...I'm publishing a book!

February 28, 1971

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Miz Mama Q. Bear

Sorry I didn't have time to fully clean this tearsheet up from its printing woes, but I got most of it done to be presentable/savable. 

I'm very busy with projects, one of which is my KickStarter campaign to print a book of my art. I'm hoping some of you may want a book of my art by pledging for one. But you would have to do so by February 14, when my campaign ends. At that point, if I haven't raised the full amount of my goal to pay for printing, then I get nothing. Right now I need every last pledge I can get. Click here for details of the book, and I hope you join in!

In the meantime, Kelly is still carrying us through Spring Cleaning...

February 21, 1971

Sunday, January 25, 2015

CRORK!

Sorry about missing last week's post. I've been totally tied up with the KickStarter campaign for a book of my artwork. I was hoping some of you might want to pledge a modest amount to get a copy of said book. One of you has. Anyone else interested? More information on the book by clicking here.

Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!


Sunday, January 11, 2015

"If and Reverse" Play

I'm feeling sad that our Friend-in-Kelly from Germany, "Hun", has excused himself from being a regular visitor here. Known initially as "Transatlantic Hun", he has loyally aided and abetted our efforts here at Whirled of Kelly, and has been a one-man cheering squad for Kelly and my dedication to Kelly.

I know there are other loyal Friends out there, but many times it's so quiet on comments that I sometimes feel like I'm posting every week just for myself and Hun. I hope I don't lose interest in this blog because of the quietude due to Hun's absence.

Thanks Hun! Long Live Kelly! 

February 7, 1971