Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art 19 Jul 2013 07:28 am
Walt Kelly’s Our Gang – redux
Let’s focus on some of the early and brilliant art of Walt Kelly.
- Bill Peckmann had 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.
1August 1946
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September 1946
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December 1946
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January 1947
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February 1947
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June 1947
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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.
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Here are two Walt Kelly single page gags from the same issue.
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on 19 Jul 2013 at 9:34 am 1.Roberto Severino said …
I really envy anyone who can balance illustrative work with cartoony work. I was more familiar with Walt Kelly’s funny animal comics, but who knew that he could also do straight work and make it lively to look at too! What an incredible draftsman.
on 19 Jul 2013 at 6:10 pm 2.Stephen Macquignon said …
Wasn’t Our Gang made into a live action tv series?
on 19 Jul 2013 at 6:18 pm 3.the Gee said …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Gang
They did end up getting syndicated on TV. That’s where I saw them. Actually, I guess that’s probably how most who have seen the Our Gang/Little Rascals have watched them. On TV.
Which brings about a question: have the rights issues and licensing and quality of the content become so messy that stuff like this is no longer on TV even in our era of 100s of channels?
Surely, these new, obscure and niche channels can’t all be filled up with Reality TV shows? There’s gotta be a venue for the old pre-WWII stuff besides DVD collections.
on 19 Jul 2013 at 8:31 pm 4.top cat james said …
Bill Peckmann, Fantagraphics Books reprinted the entire run of Kelly’s “Our Gang” series in an affordable four volume set a few years ago. They are available from their web site or on Amazon.
on 24 Jul 2013 at 9:48 am 5.Bill said …
top cat james, thank you so much for finding and letting us know about the reprint series, from what I saw on Amazon, the books look G R E A T!!! Especially neat to see Kelly’s beginning in comic books and then see how fast he grew!
on 24 Jul 2013 at 6:06 pm 6.top cat james said …
You’re welcome!
Thank you for sharing your treasures with us.