EGG!

Here's another Kandi the Cave Kid by Kelly. Two different sets of scans showed up here, one from OtherEric and the other from Barry, both great friends of this blog. Each set had something different and better than the other, so I combined them in editing to come up with 4 pretty pages. Kelly has drawn quite a few monkeys, birds and dinosaurs over the years, and these are some of his earliest.

As I've said, some of the items that show up on Whirled of Kelly have been seen elsewhere on the net or in books at one time and place or another, but I want to have most all of Kelly's stuff to ultimately end up here on this site, and with high quality scans at that!

Thank you OtherEric and Barry!

Walt Kelly — Kandi — Looney Tunes #11 — September, 1942

Santa Sends for Help

Some time ago, OtherEric, of the Digital Comic Museum, sent over another issue of The Adventures of Peter Wheat, and I'm just now getting around to cleaning and tweaking the scans. I appreciate OtherEric's patience when that happens. He works so hard tracking down rare issues and scanning and sending, and then I just seem to dawdle around with 'em.

This is issue #21, and you may think it's a little early for a Christmas number, but if you'll look closely at the opening narration box, it says "The Christmas SEASON is approaching", and that's SORta now.

Thanks again Eric!

I jes' love to zoom in and look closer at Kelly art, i.e. the panels below:

The panel below 'freezes' the action so perfectly:

A Looney Tune

Walt Kelly certainly paid his dues as a comic book man, creating stories for the middle of many a book, early in his career.

For instance, he created half a dozen stories of Pat, Patsy and Pete for some early Looney Tunes Comics—obscure material and fairly rare to come by. But our blog compatriot OtherEric DID come by one and generously shares his scans with us here.

Kelly's style is quite recognizable, even early on, with his kids cute as ever. His bear bears a resemblance to Carl Bark's bears from this period, but how many different ways can you draw cartoon bears anyway?

It's all part of the Whirled of Kelly, from Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies #24, October 1943:

Easter is a Time for Peace

I See My Doody an' I Dood It

Here it is Sunday, and you know that on Sunday I like to post up a Pogo Sunday, cuz Sunday just don't seem right without a Sunday Pogo.

BUT, this week there tain't no color at all, and that's alright, cuz this is a special original Sunday drawing, from Kelly's prime time period of 1953. This detailed scan was sent over from Holland by a new friend, Gerben Valkema—a cartoonist of delightful work, who credits Kelly as an influence, having this art hanging over his drawing board!

I am especially delighted to see this artwork, because it just so happens that it's from my favorite sequence of Kelly's—with elf-like human beans, the Fountain of Youth, and some of the lushest brushwork to come out of the Okefenokee. This is from the fabulous arc reprinted in Pogo's Sunday Punch. I recommend that those of you who have that book to get it out and compare the panels to this strip and you'll see that, as is usual for the books, some of the Sunday panels were edited out—such as this one:

As I told Gerben, Pogo's Sunday Punch is one of the books that I had with me when I met Kelly, and I opened it to this page when we talked about the fairy tale aspect of Pogo. It was the page with this artwork that he held open as he refreshed his memory.

And now we can get close-up to see Kelly's lush brush, layered over his spontaneous blue penciling, and marvel at his comic art genius.

Thanks Gerben! What a treat!

Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!

Been Workin' Here Quite a Spell

I hope The Whirled of Kelly is a happy place for you. I'm certainly enjoying it.

Several years ago, I felt I'd grown bored of the Okefenokee, and I was preparing to divest myself of the collection—books, strips and all. But I started scanning a few of my favorite pieces for keepsakes, when I realized I had QUITE a few favorites and wasn't going to be able to do it easily.

And then I started examining the scans close-up and realized I hadn't looked closely at Kelly's work since I was a kid. Back then, I'd snuggle close to the books and microscopically enjoy each ink line. As I grew older I'd look at it all quickly and not take the time to savor Kelly's whirled.

Now, with the scans, I saw details that brought me right into the artwork again. And when I started sharing the scans on the blogs, I saw them through visitor's eyes, fresh and new. I now believe that even if and when the reprint series finally fills our shelves, I will want to continue savoring the artwork on the large computer screen, to immerse myself into Kelly's artwork.

All of what I'm saying is a preamble to a request that I'm making to all fans of Kelly.

I'm requesting that those of you who have Pogo strips in your collection will consider sharing high-res scans of them through this site—especially Sunday strips from the 1950s. Some of you might own only one or two or maybe dozens, scattered through disconnected dates. My personal collection began in 1963, and even in that year were only intermittently saved.

When I was starting the Pogo in Pandemonia blog, I heard from several fans willing to share strips from that era, though I had most of that material already. Thank you to those that had material that supplemented mine. It was a pretty thorough romp through one of the best years of comic strip history.

So, there must be some great collections out there that include the glorious Sunday strips of the 50s. We've seen some of that material repackaged in the black and white reprint books. But that stuff was heavily edited and abridged, and somehow lost a bit of the charm of newsprint and ben-day dots.

So, please email me if you have such material and see if we can work something out. I will give credit where credit is due, and our built-in audience of Kelly fans will thank you as well.

We still have lots of stuff from my collection yet to come. And the very next post will begin a set of outrageously wonderful Kelly material being shared with us by OtherEric, our venerable Kelly agent, outstanding in his field—the wheat field!

. . . meanwhile, back at the swamp . . .

A Sunday strip from the 50s, scanned from the Ten Ever-lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo volume. Charming, but could be oh so much more so with color!

See ya in the funnies!

A Dread Plague of Beatniks

Human Beans appearing in the Pogo strip was a plenty rare event.

At the time of this strip in 1965, Hippies had barely been heard of, outside of a vague use of the term for people who were 'hip'. 'Beatniks' was the appellation and social stereotype applied to young people with guitars and lots of hair. It was the beginning of the end of an era, and the social revolution to come was just as bewildering to Kelly, I think, as it was to most people of his generation.

Marty Allen, the comedian whose tagline was a big 'HELLO DERE' was REALLY popular at that time, having the distinction of performing with his comedy partner Steve Rossi on the Ed Sullivan show on the same night as the Beatles, not just once but twice.

Visit from St. Nicholas

There's been a lot of versions of this weathered old poem, but this is (I think) a genuinely funny take on it. This was published at the height (or depths) of the Cold War, but you'll love this, little Posie of Pinsk.

Visit from St. Nicholas - 2