Sunday, September 27, 2015

All Big Fishes Get Away

Simple and sweet—sometimes Kelly had to take a breather from the hoo-roar of Albert and all the other numbskull shenanigans of the swamp, and what better way than with Pogo and Rackety Coon Chile...

Another scan from my dwindling stash of strips that I clipped decades ago, never dreaming that I'd get to one day share it with you, wherever you are in the world.

July 27, 1969

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Speechless

Every once in a while Kelly would drop in a wordless filler strip, looking much like his comic book art, and in fact may have been recycled from the idea pile that outlived the Dell comic book. Simplistic stuff, but Kelly makes the art delicious.

October 5, 1952

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Whompin' Out a Tune

Jes' the simple art of Albert whompin' out a tune is funny.


Sunday, September 13, 2015

Gran'pa Pearlie Passleboo 'Possum

Another Sunday strip from my stash o' strips that I collected as a young sprat. Sure, it's just talking heads, but of more interest to my boyhood aesthetics than the rest of the Sunday funnies.

February 16, 1964

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Replete with Nuances an' Subtle Undershadings of Philosophy

This post (and really, posts to come) are dedicated to my good cyber-friend Loren, who, in our correspondence, was instrumental in convincing me to return to regular blogging here on Whirled of Kelly. She is a young art & animation student, whose love of animation finds great inspiration in the art and writing of Kelly. 

Her enthusiasm for Kelly's cartooning genius; her appreciation of my curation of this site; her encouragement of the benefit to art students and pros, animation students and pros, and enthusiasts of all kinds has persuaded me to keep up with the hard work of sourcing, scanning, cleaning and curating Kelly's wonderful work.

I've written previously of my (and other people's) recurring night-time dream of wandering into an old bookstore and finding a Pogo book that I had never seen before, though I thought I had completed my collection long ago.

In reality, that dream came true just a few years ago. 

I had not made a checklist of Pogo books to check off, but I really thought that I had them all. So when I saw The Pogo Sunday Book on a dusty book shelf, I did an actual double take and poked myself to see if this was one of those dreams. 

I don't think the book is all that rare, but I've not seen one before or since the day that I grabbed it up to pay only a few dollars for. It's mostly a reprint of some of the earliest Pogo Sunday strips, heavily edited and in black and white. It was only very recently that I read the intro page by Kelly to realize that the first 10 pages of the book was a 'new' story of 1956 vintage. Looking at it now, I wonder if it was slated to be a story in the Pogo comic books, or 'just' one that Kelly and his assistant George Ward did just for this book.

And it's funny. I haven't had that recurring dream since.

I show the story here for all of you, and especially for Loren!


 The back cover portrays the iconic portrait of Pogo












Sunday, September 6, 2015

Edded Owgga Air Add Leggo Ooms!

This week we have a bonus of TWO early Sunday strips! 

If you are a dedicated Pogophile you have prolly seen these, as they appear in the lovely Fantagraphics reprint series. 

But I have a goal of posting as many strips that I can of the Kelly oeuvre in my lifetime, whether they've been seen a lot or not,  and people relatively new to Pogo get to see a bunch of this stuff for the very first time! Yay!

 February 22, 1953

March 1, 1953