Our Retread Prince, Jack Acid

I would be remiss to not follow the last post on The Prince of Pompadoodle with this Pompadoodlish fairy tale. The drawing of the castle/fortress is delicious and the next to last page is tasty as well. Well, the whole tale is a buffet of delight, all about communists and fascists and nazis, oh, and chimps. If only I understood it.

The Prince of Pompadoodle

When I talked with Walt Kelly all those many years ago, a subject that echoes clearly in my mind was his emphasis on the importance of fairy tales to burgeoning minds. With a twinkle in his eye, he bade me to never forsake the tales, as most adults tend to do. He talked of the tales as wonderment that sought to reveal knowledge of the ways of humankind.

Fairy tales may be described in any number of ways*, and by any definition, Walt Kelly's life work was essentially one long fairy tale—including the day to day fables and stories of Pogo and the swampland characters, and of course the Adventures of Peter Wheat, and the scores of traditional fairy tales in his whirled of comic books.

There were times, as below, that he merged his whirleds in an effort to teach us something.

Indeed—Kelly's style, point of view and sense of humor tied all of his work together in a whirled of wonderment that sought to reveal the ways of humankind.

* Think of Kelly as you read of the essence of fairy tales here.

A Post-Prandial Pox

Sunday, Kelly Sunday! Forty-five years ago this morning:

Cilly Stuff

All of Kelly's artwork from Animal Comics has been archived at the Digital Comic Museum, but I've got my own scans of some of the stories to illustrate the menagerie that Kelly worked on in his journeyman days. Case in point: Cilly Goose from Animal Comics #15.

Weather-Beaten Copy

I just HAD to show you what a typical page of the last post looked like before it was digitally cleaned. We could have gone further and made it almost pristine, but while we wanted to make the art viewable, we are still honoring the weather-beating this copy went through to get to our 'modern age'.

Further Adventures of Peter Wheat

The Adventures of Peter Wheat was an intriguing portal into Kelly's Whirled. I know it's the geek in me, but I imagine that these adventures take place in a winter wheatfield just upriver from the Okefenokee. These bugs are the more adventurous kin to those in the swamp, but you might imagine they are cousins and that Bumbazine may have met Peter Wheat somewhere along the way.

Well anyway, finding these adventures in print is an arduous task, as they are fairly rare and collected mostly by the most dedicated Kelly fans (later issues were drawn by Al Hubbard, who also drew adventures of Mary Jane and Sniffles). One of the most dedicated of the dedicated fans is OtherEric, who is on a quest to archive all of Peter's adventures.

This #10 issue was hard to come by, and even then was in terrible shape—heavily stained and brittle. But OtherEric and Yoc, both basing their operations at the newly and nicely organized Digital Comic Museum, worked digitally to restore the loveliness to Kelly's art. I did a little more cleaning up, and OtherEric once again is generously allowing me to premier the results here, before posting at digitalcomicmuseum.com (which, believe me, is worth your time to join)—an incredible resource, as stated by one of our commenters.

A word of warning: the last two pages were missing from this copy, so the story is interrupted, but OtherEric tracked down a very low resolution scan of the last page and dropped in some readable text so that you can get a sense of (*SPOILER*) the happy ending. And I think you can figure out what happened on the page before that.

I'm told we will be receiving more rare Peter Wheat stuff in the future. We posted one of Peter's adventures at Christmas time and didn't receive even ONE comment. I'm hoping some of you will take time to thank OtherEric for his erstwhile quest for these lovely chapters from The Whirled of Kelly.

What in the Whirled?

Good morning! Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday. This strip saw print exactly 45 years ago this morning!