Friday Fairy Tale Fun FAIRY TALE PARADE "Emperor's New Clothes"

Besides Doing Holiday-Themed Variations of Classic Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales...

...legendary writer artist Walt (Pogo) Kelly also did straight-up retellings of those children's stories!

This PG (no nudity) retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's satirical fairy tale appeared in Dell's Fairy Tale Parade #2 (1942)!

The series ran for nine 68-page issues, and while Walt Kelly did a considerable amount of the material, he didn't do all of it!
Other contributors included humor/kids' comics veterans Gardner DuBois, Arthur Jameson, Jon Small, L Bing (whose first name is unknown), Bill Brady, Casper Emerson, and George Kerr!

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Monday Madness: The Forgotten Inspiration for Disney's FROZEN...Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen"

Disney has a long history of adapting classic fairy tales...

...but none went further away from the source material than "Frozen".

Yes, it's been a commercial phenomenon, but, if you're looking for the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale...this ain't it!

If you want to see an extremely-faithful version of the classic tale...

...click HERE, and "Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go!"

Friday Fun RIOT "Mother Goosepimple's Nursery Rhymes" Parts 1 & 2

Atlas Comics' numerous 1950s MAD comic clones...

...gave the company's creatives a chance to flex their artistic muscles in ways rarely-seen by their readers!

This never-reprinted short from Atlas RIOT #5 (1956) gave amazingly-versatile artist Joe Maneely a chance to show his rarely-seen humorous side.

The second, final, also never-reprinted installment in this series features an artist who already had a rep doing humor, John Severin, best known for his serious Western and War comics work at Harvey and EC!

He was also brother of EC Comics colorist Marie Severin, who later became Marvel's resident caricaturist (among her many other talents)!
I suspect this was going to be an ongoing series featuring rotating illustrators, but since Riot was cancelled as of this issue (6) in 1956, we'll never know!
BTW, if the writing style for both stories feels "familiar", that's because it was by snarky Stan (the Man) Lee!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Jack Rabbit and the Beanstalk"

The only thing even vaguely Easter-related in this Walt Kelly-written and illustrated story...

...is the fact Jack Rabbit is selling Easter Eggs to make ends meet!

Accept it, and enjoy the obvious adaptation and the guest characters from other nursery rhymes and fairy tales!

This never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949) winds up our holiday-themed posts for the season.

Hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we did producing them!

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LITTLE MERMAID...the REAL Story!

The new live-action film opening Friday...

...and the 1989 animated Disney version that inspired it are not quite what Hans Christian Andersen wrote!

There are a couple of comic book versions that retell the tale far more accurately!

This is one of them...

It's definitely not the usual "and they lived happily ever after" ending, eh?

Illustrated by Marv Levy, this short appeared in the Ziff-Davis 100-page one-shot Hans Christian Anderson (1952).
If you'd like to know more about the comic story and the comic itself, click HERE for info about the astounding origin of the comic and how it ties in to a live-action version of the fairy tale!
And, if you'd like to see a different, longer, even more detailed (but less accurate) version of this fairy tale, click HERE!

Monday Madness CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas Problem of the Woman in the Shoe"

We presented a Yuletide story of the classic Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe HERE...

...but it wasn't Walt (Pogo) Kelly's first visit to the unique domicile filled with children!

Written and illustrated by Kelly, this never-reprinted story from Dell's Four Color Comics: Christmas with Mother Goose #90 (1945) was Walt's first take on the concept!

Which one do you think is better?

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Monday Madness CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas in the Shoe"

Walt (Pogo) Kelly was Dell's go-to creator for light-hearted kids' stories...

...as this tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #201: Christmas with Mother Goose (1948) amply demonstrates!

Kelly was expert at doing sequels to classic fairy tales, often inserting them into situations never conceived of by the original storytellers, yet making them "feel" totally-natural, as if they were "lost" stories by the original creators!
BTW, this was not the only time Kelly put the characters in a Christmas tale!
You'll see the other one next week!

Note: this was reprinted once, in a magazine, Western/Golden's Christmas Annual #8 (1975), 

This is the only issue which included comics.

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