The early art of Walt Kelly -- "the Adventures of Peter Wheat" part two

As mentioned earlier, before creating Pogo and coining the immortal words "We have met the enemy, and he is us" Walt Kelly was a gifted comic book writer and artist working mainly for Dell. One of the more unexpectedly charming works of that period was a series of promotional comics for a now forgotten bakery.





















You can find pretty much the whole run at the Digital Comics Museum.

The early art of Walt Kelly -- "the Adventures of Peter Wheat" part one

Before the glory days of Pogo, Kelly was (along with John Stanley and Carl Barks) part of the great but nameless trio at Dell Comics that produced what are still widely considered the best children's comics ever made. It was around this time that Kelly wrote and drew a promotional comic book to be given away at bakeries. "The Adventures of Peter Wheat" should have been awful, but Kelly manages to pack considerable charm and a surprising amount of actual adventure into these stories.

For students of Kelly's art, Peter Wheat offers great examples of the artist's ability to anthropomorphize animals without simply making them people with funny ears and noses.

From the justly-forgotten corner -- Dell's TV and movie comics

Back in the age of the spinner rack, before every town had a comic book store and even your local library found room for a graphic novel section, pickings were often limited to a few grocery store and drug store displays. What was even worse, many of these displays would only carry 'wholesome' comics -- Harvey, Gold Key, Dell.

For comic book historians, Dell will undoubtedly be remembered for publishing three of the unquestioned giants of the medium (Walt Kelly, Carl Barks and John Stanley) but for a kid holding a week's allowance with one hand and turning a picked-over spinner rack with the other, Dell often meant settling for a cheesy TV or movie adaptation.

These shows generally made for boring comics, particularly given the realistic but crude house style of the line. Not only would the characters in the comics not look much like the actors they portrayed, they would differ from the actor in different ways from panel to panel (check out Patrick McGoohan and Tim Conway).

Here, for the sake of completeness, is a










And just in case you thought the classics of American cinema were safe...