All Over the Whole Wide World

As most of you Kelly addicts, all over the whole wide world, know, Kelly did a lot of covers and some stories for Disney Dell Comics back in the '40s. He did some miscellaneous stuff like posters and house ads . . . like this one for Disney comics. It's pretty funny for an ad, somewhat like what Mad Magazine would have done, and pretty inappropriate for its racial stereotype. 

But hey, that was then, this is now.

And later, Kelly returned to the Russian steppes for Pogo.

1946 American Trade Journal

Kelly's Donald

A query came in the last post's comments, asking about any Kelly credit for this German edition of Duck reprints. You can reference that question in that post's comments, and the general answer is that the German cover is a modern 'tracing' of the Kelly cover on WDCS #101, changing a few details (fez, slippers, patterns, and even 'hatch' lines [Kelly's lines on the side of the chair indicate that Donald puts a bit of weight on the chair], etc). 

Part of the question was, is that the work of Jippes on the modern cover?  I'm guessing no, because I think Jippes would change it all a bit more to fit his lovely style, but ya never know.

And YES, we will have more new Pogo stuff, it's just stuck somewhere in the pipeline. I'm working on it!

WDCS #101

Neatest, Correct Answers

You never know where you'll find Kelly stuff from back in the good ol' Dell days. This man was ever so prolific in his art.

So Kelly

Alright! As mentioned a mere less than a fortnight ago, here we go — a fairly good scan of Kelly's give-away rendering of a Disney circus, circa 1947. The mild gags and characterizations are so Kelly.

© Walt Disney Productions

Kelly Circus Picture

There are so many wonderful Walt Kelly treasures to be uncovered and presented in full resolution.

This back page of a 1940s Dell comic features the ducks by Kelly, but even more tantalizing is the advertised poster that has to be by Kelly, judging from all the style clues — such a magnificent example of Kelly's time with Disney characters!

Does anyone have a lead to a full resolution scan of this poster?

Fowl Mood

Seeing covers like this comic cheer me up no matter what foul mood I'm in. And of course Walt Kelly is responsible for this particular one.

In fact, it was Kelly and Carl Barks and a few other geniuses that were responsible for keeping the Golden Age of Comics alive for another few years into the '50s, bless their hearts and souls.

Walt Kelly — Walt Disney Comics and Stories — February 1950

Walt Kelly, Comic Book Artist

In anticipation of the upcoming posting of the first three issues of Kelly's The Adventures of Peter Wheat, I wanted to have the stage set for the significance of what we'll be seeing. OtherEric, of The Digital Comic Museum (DCM), has not only generously supplied the scans of those comics to premier here before being installed at the DCM, but also agreed to introduce the series with some background thoughts:

Thom has asked me to write something about Peter Wheat. I assume if you're here, you don't need me to explain why Walt Kelly is wonderful, which will save some time getting started.

Walt Kelly's comic BOOK work is not as well known as his comic STRIP work; but Kelly was pretty much Dell/Western's star artist in the 40s. He more or less defined their house style, and when not doing licensed material, such as Disney characters in his own inimitable way . . .

he often got a byline. There are quite a few books when he even got his name on the cover, which was very unusual for that time.

So at least in the world of comic books, Kelly was a big name when he started doing Peter Wheat, to the point where it's somewhat surprising that he was used on it. Either the bread company asked for him specifically, or Kelly saw something in the series that he really wanted to do, possibly both. Because even based on the roughly 1/3 of the run that I've seen, Peter Wheat was Kelly's finest moment in comic BOOKS, in my opinion.

Before getting into justifying that statement, let me discuss briefly Kelly's other major comic book series.

Mother Goose, while having an extensive run over several years, was predominantly illustrated poems rather than comics, just happening to be in comic book format.

Our Gang was frequently wonderful, but it took Kelly a long time to really turn it into HIS project. And it may just be me, but Kelly's talents always seem somewhat wasted on a series with no fantastic elements. His funny animals or fairy tales are so wonderful that a series dealing with what's more or less the real world seems not to be using Kelly to his full potential.

Pogo, while consistently a delight, really divides into two runs, both with their own weaknesses. The Animal Comics run and the Four Color issues show the development of Pogo and his fellow swamp dwellers, and there is a LOT of work to get them from their early versions in Animal Comics #1 to the cast we know and love in the comic strip. Kelly also didn't hesitate to borrow from himself for the comic strip; there are several stories in the comics where the definitive versions of the stories would later show up in the strip.

The later Pogo Comics, while they feature the characters in their developed form, are firmly secondary to the newspaper version. While Kelly did an incredible amount and quality of work on the comic book, it never quite stood alone without the strip. Perhaps if we didn't have the comic strip to compare with, I would put Pogo first in my estimation. But while all the work on the books was necessary to have the strip appear almost full-grown on the newspaper page, it still comes off as the lesser work—even if it's heads and shoulders above most of the other comic books of its time.

Fairy Tale Parade is perhaps Kelly's best comic book work outside of Peter Wheat. He shows an effort and a love for the material that shines out.

It's clear on many of his stories that he's putting a lot more effort into them than some of his other projects of the time. That's not putting down his other work, just saying that this was clearly where he put any extra time he had while maintaining his amazingly high page count back then.

Peter Wheat is really the heir to Kelly's efforts on Fairy Tale Parade—just by its nature it occurs in the sort of world that fairy tales happen in. I don't know what the Bakers Associates wanted for their comic, but other than possibly asking for the occasional cliffhanger, I can't imagine they were expecting what they got. Kelly took the "Adventures" part of the title seriously, because the book is Kelly's effort to do a straightforward adventure series. It's often amusing, of course, but I haven't seen any stories that are primarily humor, and the book frequently gets surprising dark and sophisticated.

Peter Wheat is Kelly's last major Comic Book only work; the later Pogo run is a spin-off of the comic strip. And in this series, Kelly brought in everything he had learned in almost a decade of being one of the best and brightest comic book artists.

Donald Duck, the Famous Actor

Kelly's Donald Duck stuff was almost always lively and quirky, very recognizable as his work.

Imagine that—if you kept the comics in just sort of good shape, a one dollar investment for a one year subscription, back in 1944, would be worth at least $5,000 today. Who knew?

Below, the subscription form, with art by Kelly.

And below, the story Kelly illustrated for this issue, breaking the pretense that these guys were anything but movie stars. Not a brilliant story, but awful fun, knowing the future of the guy who drew it.

1st Snow White Re-release

Of course we're not forgetting that Walt Kelly was one of Walt Disney's best, producing many many comics and covers in the 40s.

In 1944 the Disney Studio re-released the feature film Snow White for the first time since it's December 1937 premiere, so to raise some liquid cash during the lean times of WWII.

Part of the studio's promotional campaign for the movie was to tie into its comic book demographics and much of the assignment came to Walt Kelly's drawing board, and aren't we glad it did.

The above scan is from a comic that my mother received as part of her subscription of 1944. I think it's kinda sweet that my mom was subscribing when she was 20 years old. You can see the subscription crease on the cover, as they were mailed uncovered and folded in half.

Below is a Heritage Auction scan of the original drawing. I think it's quite informative to see that the original ink drawing can be pretty sparse, knowing that the coloration will bring it to life.

Above is another scan from my mother's subscription that somehow didn't get creased, and below from Heritage Auctions.