Showing posts with label Walt Kelly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walt Kelly. Show all posts

Friday, December 3, 2021

Friday Holiday Fun CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas Alphabet"

Nobody did Christmas-themed comics better than the legendary Walt (Pogo) Kelly...
...as this never-reprinted piece from Dell's Four Color Comics #201 (1948), one of the annual Christmas with Mother Goose anthologies, proves!
Yeah, it is difficult to find something Yuletide-related that begins with "Z"...any suggestions?
Christmas with Mother Goose was an ongoing annual from 1945 through 49.
It apparently ended when Walt Kelly left Dell to work full-time on his new Pogo newspaper strip.
But Dell continued to do Yuletide annuals with a Frosty the Snowman series from 1951 to 1961 as well as continuing an already-ongoing line of Kris Kringle-themed Santa Claus Funnies running from 1944 through 1961!
(In early 1962 Dell Comics broke up into two companies, the already-established Dell, which had really just handled distribution, and Gold Key Comics, which had handled the editorial and art production chores, but not newsstand distribution.
This left Dell, which had to build a comics editorial division from scratch, without the resources to continue the Christmas-themed annuals.)

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Friday, April 2, 2021

Friday Fun / Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Buddy Bunny's Problem"

Here's a kool short story by Walt (Pogo) Kelly...
...about the Easter Bunny bringing his son into the family business!
This story from Dell's Four Color Comics #103: Easter with Mother Goose (1946) was written and illustrated by Walt Kelly, whose signature series Pogo wouldn't debut for another three years.
Trivia:
While Pogo as a stand-alone series began in 1949, various characters including Pogo himself and Albert the Alligator had appeared as supporting characters in other Walt Kelly-written and drawn strips since 1941.

Friday, March 26, 2021

Friday Fun / Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Ten Little Easter Eggs"

Here's a perfect rhyme for the little ones...
...from the typewriter and brush of legendary comic creator Walt (Pogo) Kelly.
Published in Dell's Four Color Comics #103: Easter with Mother Goose (1946), this "gentle" little piece is a classic example of innocently-violent, yet kid-friendly material rarely-seen today.
(And please, no politically-correct comments about the "Two little Easter eggs playing with a gun" rhyme.)

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "Ticky Tack the Littlest Reindeer"

You know all about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer...
...but I'd bet you've never even heard rumors about this guy!
This story from Dell's Four Color #205 (1948) aka Santa Claus Funnies, is an original tale by writer/artist Walt (Pogo) Kelly, who mostly did adaptations of fairy tales modified to fit the Christmas season or straight-out re-tellings like "Night Before Christmas".
There have been other "Littlest Reindeer" tales, but none with this particular plot or characters (besides Santa and the rest of the classic reindeer, of course!)!
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Monday, December 7, 2020

Monday Madness / Holiday Reading Room CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "3 Christmas Bears"

A Christmas-themed variation on a classic fairy tale...
...as told by Walt (Pogo) Kelly!
Told with charm and finesse, this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color #253 (1949) aka Christmas with Mother Goose, was one of a number of already-existing stories Kelly wittily-modified to fit the Yuletide season.
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Monday, November 30, 2020

Monday Madness / Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "How Santa Got His Red Suit"

Didn't you ever wonder...
Well, here's the answer, from Dell's Four Color Comics #61 (1944)!
After being published annually as it's own title in 1942-1943, Santa Claus Funnies became a Four Color Comics feature, publishing annually from 1944 to 1961.
This tale was written and illustrated by Walt Kelly, before he created the classic comic strip Pogo.
Beginning with a two-part adaptation of the novel Gulliver's Travels in New Comics in 1935,  Walt began an almost two-decade run in comic books, almost all of it for Dell Comics, where his distinctive style quickly developed into the "house style" for humor and funny animal stories that other artists would try to emulate.
Walt was the primary artist on the ongoing Santa Claus Funnies and Christmas with Mother Goose series, and, as we said, we'll be presenting quite a few of those stories this Christmas season.
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