Jes' In Time!

Open 'er up fer an extra big panel!

1951

Good Cheer! Good Cheer!

Well, most of us Pogophiles have seen this selection of Pogo in black and white, published here and there, as well as an early post on this blog. But I, personally, have not seen the colorized version presented here, thoughtfully sent over by Friend-in-Kelly Richard Davidson. 

This, as you see, was printed in the Daily News Magazine in 1987, well past Kelly's passing, but still a legitimate bauble in the Kelly treasure trove of Christmas ephemera.

It's fun to see Kelly's photo looking all curmudgeonly, and the writing in the introduction is nicely done by Jay Maeder.

Kelly's art is equally enjoyed (at least by me) in its lush black and white AND its lush colorized versions. So, this is a lovely stocking stuffer for Christmas Eve.

Open the door, Richard!

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.

He is US!

Ever wonder what the Pogo strip would look like if it was properly animated, that is to say with gen-you-wine Kelly art and production values?

We received a wonderful link here from our friend Yves, that tantalizes us with what might have been.

By all means, click here!

This is an absolutely delightful effort by Kelly himself (and Selby Kelly) to bring the swamp alive (even with those wonderful herons winging through the background!). I've always wondered what the proper voices would sound like for the swamp cast, and Kelly himself demonstrates a charming homespun cornpone take as well as lovely narration. The animation needed a few more between cells, but so what. It's bee-you-tiful to behold.

Thanks Yves!

 © Walt Kelly Estate

© Walt Kelly Estate

Seein' As It's So Near to Christmas

I was thinking tonight that Walt Kelly is my favorite cartoonist in the history of great cartoonists. And I was going to say that Pogo is ALmost my favorite comic strip. Then I tried to think of a strip that was more of a favorite than Pogo . . . and I couldn't think of one! Kelly and Pogo are my candidates for BEST cartoonist and strip of all time! And that includes Hal Foster, Milton Caniff, and Alex Raymond!

Here's an early Christmas present for you'n'me — a be-you-tiful Christmas Sunday from the early years of Pogo. Thanks again, so much, to DJ David B for the raw scan!

December 23, 1951

In a Land Where None are Known to Neatly Knot the Gnu

I posted this pic over on The Pictorial Arts blog, but seeing as this blog is aiming to post all things Kelly, I hafta duplicate it over here for the archives.

— Dedicated to 'Hun', who eats, sleeps, and breathes Kelly.

Long live Kelly!

Walt Kelly — Songs of the Pogo — endpapers

With Apologies to a Year Gone By

Raise your glasses! Here's to another year of Kelly treasures!

These two are repeats, but they're worth bringing to the forefront...

Peace on Earth

Well, the best laid plans, huh? I was going to post this lyrical looking daily on Christmas day, but I couldn't find it until just now, day after Christmas. You don't mind if'n I post it now, do you? I don't want to wait another 364 days. I'd prolly REALly lose it by then.

Alright then.

Miggle's Market Marauders

I'll tell you why I asked you to pay attention to that last segment of The Oldest Man in the World Contest . . . because that was the last segment of The Oldest Man in the World Contest. That was it. No more. Never mentioned again. We'll never know who won. Kelly seemed to have lost interest and just walked away from it. After all, it was his strip—he could do whatever he wanted with it.

The strip below is the very next one, and after that Kelly moves on to other nonsense.

Pogofenokee

1952 is one of my favorite years for several reasons, one of which was the flowering beauty of Walt Kelly's art. This is his double page spread from Life Magazine. A very tip top Kelly favorite of all time.

Events of 1952

• January 8 – West Germany has 8 million refugees inside its borders.
• January 14 – Today premieres on NBC, becoming one of the longest-running television series in America.
• January 24
  • A sudden heavy snowfall hits Algeria.

The 3 Queens in mourning- Queen Elizabeth II, her grandmother, Queen Mary and her mother, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother at the funeral of King George VI.

• February 2 – A tropical storm forms just north of Cuba moving northeast. The storm makes landfall in southern Florida the next day. It is the earliest reported landfall from a tropical storm, and the earliest formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.
• February 6
  • Elizabeth II becomes Queen upon the death of her father George VI. She is simultaneously proclaimed Queen of Canada at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Ontario.
  • In the United States, a mechanical heart is used for the first time in a human patient.
• February 7 – Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom at St. James's Palace, London, England—an event that effectively knocked Walt Kelly and Pogo off the front cover of Life Magazine, and deep into the interior pages.
• February 14 – February 25 – The Winter Olympics held in Oslo, Norway.
• February 15 – The funeral of King George VI takes place at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
• February 26 – United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill announces that the United Kingdom has an atomic bomb.

• March 15 – March 16 – 73 inches (1,870 mm) of rain falls in Cilaos, Réunion, the most rainfall ever in one day.
• March 20 – The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.
• March 22 – Wernher von Braun publishes the first in his series of articles entitled Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, including ideas for manned flights to Mars and the Moon.

• April 15 – The United States B-52 Stratofortress flies for the first time.
• April 23 – A nuclear test is held in the Nevada desert.
• April 28
  • The Treaty of San Francisco goes into effect, formally ending the occupation of Japan.
  • The Treaty of Taipei is signed between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.

• May 1 – East Germany threatens to form its own army.
• May 2 – The first passenger jet flight route between London and Johannesburg.
• May 3 – U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.
• May 6 – Farouk of Egypt has himself announced as a descendant of prophet Muhammad.
• May 13 – Pandit Nehru forms his first government in India.
• May 18 – Ann Davison becomes the first woman to single-handedly sail the Atlantic Ocean.

• June 5 – Remains of a Viking ship are found near Boston, Massachusetts.
• June 14 – The keel is laid for the U.S. nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.
• June 15 – The Diary of Anne Frank is published.
• June 19 – The United States Army Special Forces is created

• 
  August 26 – A British passenger jet flies twice over the Atlantic Ocean in the same day.July 13 – East Germany announces the formation of its National People's Army.
• July 19–26 – Washington D.C. is "buzzed" by several alleged UFOs tracked on multiple radars. Jets scramble on several occasions and the objects take evasive action, only to return after the jets leave the area.^[1]
• July 19 – August 3 – The 1952 Summer Olympics are held in Helsinki, Finland.

• September 6 – Television debuts in Canada as the CBC in Montreal, Quebec airs..
• September 18 – The Soviet Union vetoes Japan's application for membership in the United Nations.

• October 14 – The United Nations begins work in the new United Nations building in New York City.
• October 16 – Limelight opens in London; writer/actor/director/producer Charlie Chaplin arrives by ocean liner; in transit his re-entry permit to the USA is revoked by J. Edgar Hoover.

• November 1 – Nuclear testing: Operation Ivy: The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, with a yield of 10.4 megatons.
• November 4
  • United States presidential election, 1952: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson (correctly predicted by the UNIVAC computer).
  • The U.S. National Security Agency is founded.
• November 21 – A show trial in Czechoslovakia sentences 11 ex-communist officials (all of them Jews) to death.
• November 29 – Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a political campaign promise, by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.

• December 4 – Great Smog of 1952: A "killer fog" descends on London (in the process coining the word "Smog", for "smoke" and "fog").