Even when Kelly fell back to 'talking heads', his art was satisfying to look at. And leave it to these two lunkheads allus trying to make a cool million while Pogo remains the calm voice of sanity.
April 9, 1972
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Junk Chunkin'
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A Triple Star Darb
April 16, 1972
I hate to admit ignorance on anything, but right up front I can tell you I had no idea what a darb is, or was. Doing a quick google, though, gave me this:
darb is an Americanism probably nearly obsolete today, a slang word from the 1920s meaning "something or someone very handsome, valuable, attractive, or otherwise excellent." Synonyms of darb: amazing, bizarre, boss, curious, exceptional, fab, fantastic, flash, gnarly, heavy, inconceivable, incredible, marvelous, odd, outstanding, particular, peculiar, phenomenal, primo, rare, remarkable, singular, special, strange, stupendous, surprising, terrific, uncommon, unfamiliar, unheard-of, unimaginable, unique, unprecedented, unthinkable, unusual, weird, wicked, wonderful, zero cool.
Who knew?
I can just imagine the young Kelly using the word and then saving it for 40 some years to drop into this strip.
And ayep, Howland actually got one over on Miggle.
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Only One Pup Like This
I'm going to start posting, once in a while, individual black and white Kelly panels that are monochromatic gems...in my view at least. These are images that could be poster size on my wall and bring great joy to my eyes (if I had any wall space left, which I don't).
I'd also like to mention that I'm going to, soon, launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for Pictorial Arts Journal official premiere issue. That Journal will be showcasing great art in large and detailed formats and will definitely promote cartooning greats, Kelly among them. I will give more details over the next couple of weeks, but I hope you already know how Kickstarter works. And I hope you might be in a position to help when the time comes.
Cheers to you all and Long Live Kelly!
Kelly is ahead of his time with his www. (if you see what I mean)
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In the Cool and Peaceful
I've shown this panel before on one of my other blogs, but it fits with my current mission of highlighting individual black and white panels that show off Kelly's mastery of brush and ink. This is a case of Kelly adding on a big section of art to an existing panel for use in one of the early S&S books.
I'm posting it here in high resolution as Kelly's art deserves.
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How Human Mice Are
I think Mouse is my favorite Okefenokee character, after Albert. Over many years of the dailies, Mouse has been the most worldly of the characters, having traveled beyond Ft Mudge, and relying on his wits and charisma to survive in a harsh world. This drawing of him by Kelly is superb in its delicacy (what wonderful whiskers) and his impassioned expression.
Mouse
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How Far is "Up"?
Ayup, here's a nice rendering of Miggle's Market. The colors are pleasantly muted and almost registered. Altogether, a nice looking Sunday strip. Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!
April 23, 1972
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Smokin' Up a Hoo-ricane
I can't believe it's another Sunday already, and a ground hoggish day at that. I think I ran out of Sunday Groundhog strips long ago, so I'll just keep on keeping on with the current sequence. Hmm, no, I may have one more ground hog day bit, but I think it's part of a longer sequence. We'll get around to that eventually.
So happy GHD! And happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday! And LLK!
April 30, 1972
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True Blueness and Cerulean Elegantics
We have a couple more weeks of junk chunkin' antics, then we move on to something else. It's a good thing these boys are such good friends, seein' as how they treat each other.
Hey Hun! That reference term you asked about? "Menacing Joie de Vivre".
Hey! Has anyone seen hard evidence of Fantagraphics' volume 3 coming out? I've been saving an Amazon gift card since Christmas just for that very tome.
May 7, 1972
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World Champeen Polluters
This Sunday strip seems, to me, to be a sign of spiraling in toward the end of the Kelly era. With still a year to go, there would yet be good strips ahead, including next week's. There's nothing majorly wrong with this strip, but you can see that either 1) Kelly didn't have his heart in it, or 2) that an assistant had a hand it this (possibly Selby?). The renderings of Albert and Beauregard are 'off' just a bit, and the message is heavy-handed without funny dialogue.
I'm not complaining, but just pointing it out, from my POV.
May 14, 1972
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Oh, Mamie Minded Mama . . .
This strip is more like it, Kelly-wise. And the Okefenokee has a Globe Theatre...how cool is that!
This is the last of the arc that I have lined up, so next week we're on to something else. I'm not sure if I have the strips following this one...I would think I have...but I'm too lazy to go through my stacks to check. Lazy, tired, pooped, exhausted...one of those things. I'm going to bed.
Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday! LLK! And a top of the morning to you, Hun! And hey to A! And cheers to Craig! I appreciate you guys and all the other Pogo-holics!
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The Birds and Bees Convention
Well, at this point I'm losing track of continuity. I went into the Army in early 1972, so I'm amazed I have any strips from that year or the next, as I was busy learning to lay waste to people who didn't believe in the western ways of Democracy. I think my mother may have been saving Sunday sections for me, but I'm not even sure of that. Somehow I have a selection from those last two years of Kelly's creation, but evidently not all.
Now this guy, below, is a real oddity. It has two characters that are totally unknown to me. I have a couple of Sunday strips just prior to this one, but I'm hesitant to share them with you, because they're, well, truth to tell—lame. Either Kelly was very sick, or his assistants were not very good. This pirate guy shows up in at least one of them, but with no explanation as to who he is. And that bird with Churchy's visage is just plain creepy. I seem to be missing some strips from a month or two before this, so maybe there will still be an explanation yet to be discovered (Hun, I've tried to access the archives that you've sent me, but they don't seem to cover this time period. Do you have records of this arc, however poor their condition may be?).
This particular strip seems solidly Kelly, whereas the previous two that I have are painful to look at. Do any of you Pogo fans want to see them anyway, out of continuity, or just allow them to hibernate?
December 12, 1972
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290 Over Yooty Snoobers
Prior to last week's Sunday post, I have four Sunday strips leading up to it. Here I post the first two, setting up the continuity, for what it's worth. Pretty loosey goosey continuity, I must say.
In an interview, Selby Kelly stated that when he was ill, Walt Kelly drew his characters sort of tiny and scrawny, and with very minimalist backgrounds — as we see here. Looking at these strips I have a feeling that the trees in the opening panels are probably paste-ups from an earlier, healthier, time.
On the next post, we'll see that the odd pirate parrot, that looks a bit like Churchy, is Churchy LaFemme's cousin, Captain Bluebeard, the Professional Parrot Pirate. Something to look forward to.
November 5, 1972
November 12, 1972
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Bread on the Waters
It's hard to know what to say about these strips. We know that Kelly was ill during this time and it wasn't just the art that suffered along with him. Strange storyline and continuity, but at least we get an oddly placed introduction to Churchy's cousin (turtle and parrot are related because they have a beak in common?).
Notice on the November 26 strip that the first two panels had art that is almost healthy, even with the big uncolored section. The rest of the strip is, well, hmm. And November 19, well, bless Kelly's heart.
I don't have all the strips from this period, perhaps because I was busy with the army at the time and perhaps I thought they weren't worth keeping.
But now dammit, I still say Long Live Kelly!
Next week, we go back to happier times to start an arc that has been seen before on the internet, but not with the resolution and loving edits that I give them.
Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!
November 19, 1972
November 26, 1972
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I've Launched a Campaign into the Wild Blue
I love love LOVE this image!
I've launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for publishing the premiere issue of Pictorial Arts Journal! The Journal will present beautiful art, including beautiful cartooning, including beautiful Kelly stuff at some point, not unlike Kelly's 100th birthday tribute that I published last August.
Please take a look at what it's all about by clicking here. I could really use your support to publish an arts journal, edited by an artist who is utterly in love with the arts.
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Mere Striplings
So, we start with a new arc from 1969, the one that pays tribute of sorts to George Herriman's Krazy Kat. I say 'of sorts' because Kelly does it in his own round-about unique way. At that time in 1969, I wonder just how many people knew of Krazy Kat or had fond memories of the strip. I knew of the strip at that time, having collected book reprints, but I didn't know anyone else that had even heard of it.
But here we are, back in the land of great Kelly art. Beauregard is 'animated' nicely. I had to work a longer time than usual editing this strip to clean it up from bleed-through and mis-registration and newspaper defects. The following strips will have much of the same problems, and this arc goes on for quite a few weeks.
Such a labor of love.
June 1, 1969
UPDATE:
As per request, below is the raw scan of the above strip to show some of the deficiencies that I deal with. Looking at it you may not think it was so much. It was mostly the bleed-through that was the most time-consuming to eradicate. And personally, I don't like raw cyans and reds, so I color edit those to my liking.
And then this story arc consists of a problem of my making — that as a teenager I originally trimmed these pages right up to and over the outer lines of the panels. So I need to amend my sin now by creating a faux margin and ink lines for the outer edges of the panels. All in all it takes a while to make the page presentable (and even then I like to leave a few rough spots here and there so that it still has that newspaper look to it).
raw scan
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Wily Skill
This strip took even longer than last week's to clean up, with lots of bleed-through from the other side. I'm amazed that it cleaned up as well as it did (with a few flaws left in intentionally). It's also amazing that newsprint survives as well as it does, seeing as how flimsy and porous as it is/was.
Hogarth, the able bodied hornet, is a great little character and he certainly seems dee-licious. That's another lovely Kelly tree, and notice that even though there's very little background in this strip the panels work beautifully because the foreground compositions are so solid. And the word balloons are perfectly integrated, as always.
Basically, an ordinary strip and a work of art!
Happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday!
June 8, 1969
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Cheerful Charlies is Allus Ready
I think a lot of general readers of the time would have no idea what was going on here or what the dialogue was all about, sort of like how it was in Krazy Kat's day.
Still a lot of bleed-through from the other side that cleaned up pretty well. The colorizing was a bit dull other than a sudden red panel.
June 15, 1969
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Off Topic, But Certainly Important
Off topic, but certainly important to the future of this blog:
Think of all the pictorial wonders that might never see the light of day if there weren't pictorialists seeking them out in dark and obscure places. Please click here to help seek the wonders.
image circa 1900
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The Committee for Reciprocity
June 22, 1969
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Ready to Resist
That last panel is a honey. I loves a Kelly poo-rade!
June 29, 1969
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