Number 1444: Walt Kelly’s Funnybodies

According to the timeline on the history of the Pogo newspaper comic strip, 1949 was a busy year for Walt Kelly. However occupied he was launching the strip that would make his fame and fortune he found time to do comic books for Dell, including Four Color #244, The Brownies.

This story, “The Brownies in the Funnybody Kingdom,” is pure Kelly, story and art. I showed it before, years ago. These are new scans.

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Walt Kelly used a pen-name in 1945 to do this beautiful childrens’ book, Trouble On the Ark. Click on the picture to see it.

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Number 344

Walt Kelly's Brownies and the Baby Chick

This is the 10th appearance of Walt Kelly in Pappy's, which shows both that he was prolific--lots to choose from--and good. The public demands Walt Kelly! Pappy gives what the public wants. Sometimes he gives what the public doesn't want, but hey...

Where was I? Oh yeah, Walt Kelly. This story is the first from The Brownies, Dell Four-Color Comic #244, dated April, 1949. Like all of Kelly's funny and whimsical adventures, regardless of the characters involved, the story goes where Kelly sends it. One description I read of Kelly was that he wrote these as he went along. Kelly was a fast artist and the artwork might seem a little rushed, but even rushed Kelly is good, if not downright great. There was never anyone quite like him.

Other stories from this issue of The Brownies are posted in Pappy's #13, and Pappy's #143.

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Number 143


Walt Kelly's The Brownies and the Ooglies!


I've spent the past 50 years with and admiring Walt Kelly's work. This is the sort of heresy that will call out Kelly's Pogo fans to scream profanities, toss a noose over a tree limb and wave torches under my window: as much as I love Pogo, I most love his comics written and drawn for kids.

Pogo went from being a kids' comic book feature to adult topical satire in newspapers. It is more grounded in its time. It was in his comics for kids that he didn't need to refer to current events, to aim his humor at hip adults. All kids care about is that it's fun to read. He gave them that. Not only kids in a chronological sense, but those of us who are still kids in an emotionally arrested sense.

"The Ooglies," from The Brownies, Dell Four-Color #244, September 1949, appears to have been turned out quickly, but that gives it a special quality of spontaneity. My memory of reading about how Kelly worked on his comic book stories is that he took sheets of drawing paper and started to draw. He made it up as he went along. It takes a great artist to be able to do that and have it come out in some sort of cogent fashion. And, as we Kelly fans--even the torch-wavers--knew, Kelly was a really great artist.

If you want to see the past Kelly postings, go to the labels below and click on Walt Kelly.

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Number 13



Walt Kelly's The Brownies in The Funnybody Kingdom


I don't think I can say much about the genius cartoonist Walt Kelly that hasn't already been said.

About all I can say is that he was liberal and progressive in one of the most repressive eras in our history, the early 1950s. Yet he got away with it, even with some savage satire of political figures, because of the sense of whimsy that permeated his work.

Pogo is his most famous work, but far from all of his work. It's his magnum opus, but not his only opus.

One of the books he worked on is the funny and beautifully drawn Brownies, Dell Four Color #244, dated April, 1949. While a lot of Kelly's work has been reprinted, I'm not sure if this story, "The Brownies In The Funnybody Kingdom" has…so if you've seen it before just enjoy it again. Otherwise you're in for a surprise when you read this story and its very Alice In Wonderland premise. Like Alice it ends enigmatically--was it a dream?--but while on the surreal ride this 15-page story takes us on it doesn't really matter, does it? It's the whimsy, the sense of fun, that goes throughout this whole story--really the whole comic book, entirely written and drawn by Kelly--that matters.

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