Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here we have Walt Kelly finally htting his stride. The Pogo Comic Book finally appears. Bill Peckmann‘s amazing collection includes some of these beautifuls works of art, and he’s sharing them with us. These are a numbaer of the Front and Back covers with the B&W illustrations within those two covers. Many thanks to Bill for sharing. Enjoy.

1
Front Cover of issue #1

2
Inner cover

3
Inner Back Cover

4
Back Cover

5
Front Cover

6

7

8
Back Cover

9
Front Cover

10

11

12
Back Cover

13
Front Cover

14

15

16
Back Cover

17
Front Cover

18

19

20
Back Cover

21
Front Cover

22

23

24
Back Cover

The Pogo covers that are in the excellent
“The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books.”
We have six of the eleven that are in the book.

For a Kelly/Pogo bio, what better place to go to than to
Michael Barrier and Martin Williams‘s boffo book
“A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics!”

(Click to enlarge to read article.)

Today and tomorrow we’ll focus on some of the early and brilliant art of Walt Kelly.

- Bill Peckmann has forwarded some of the covers from Walt Kelly‘s Dell comic books, the “Our Gang” series, dated 1946 & 1947. Also included in this stash are a couple of the interior stories.

Bill writes:

I certainly wish I had more than these 7 issues of Walt Kelly’s “Our Gang” comic books published by Dell, but looking at these covers, they will give you a sense of what Kelly was up to.

Each issue contained a 14 to 16 page “Our Gang” story done by Kelly, a “Tom and Jerry” story, a “Flip and Dip”, a Carl Barks “Barney Bear and Benny Burro” piece and ended with an appearance by “Wuff the Prairie Dog”.

I’ll include one “Our Gang” story and one “Barney Bear” to round out the post and save the “Pogo” comics for a post by themselves.

1
August 1946

2
September 1946

3
December 1946

4
January 1947

5
February 1947

6

7
June 1947

8
back cover
All the back covers have basically the same subscription ad,
but I thought I’d send one along for the “currency” shock of it.

What happens when you pour deceptively simple and totally charming into a bottle and shake ‘em up? Why out pours Walt Kelly’s “Our Gang” comics of course! What a touch he had for combining “cartoony” and “straight” in those stories, not an easy thing to pull off, he and Roy Crane were masters of it! Norman Maurer of “Boy” and “Daredevil” comics also had that wonderful ability.