To be honest, I've never been big into politics or very outgoing with my opinions on that subject. I've always agreed with my Grandparents generation who felt voting was a person thing and didn't talk about the candidates they were voting for in public.
If you enjoy debating politics online or in public, that's fine. It's just not my thing. I don't enjoy cutting people to the quick politically, spiritually or philisophically.
So this is about as political as I'll ever get and I think Walt Kelly's Pogo sums it up beautifully:
It looks like things are heating up in today's strip by A-Town Krolikowski!! Be sure to keep up with the latest adventures and goings on of Mayor Bubblebop, Holly and the other inhabitants of Wissahickon Creek at Flying Kite Media and past strips can be found at Interview-Press.
If you have not been keeping up with the goings on at Wissahickon Creek then you've been missing out on probably one of the best and original strips to come out in a very long time.
My old chum A-Town Krolikowski had been working on this strip for well over a year now and he officially launched it a few weeks back. And the only place you can check it out at is Flying Kite. Click on the link below to keep up with the adventures of Mayor Bubblebop and the other inhabitants of Wissahickon Creek. And who will end up being mayor?
My good friend, former roommate, wedding emcee and real live bona fide cartoonist A-Town Krolikowski has launched his new ongoing web comic called Mayor of Wissahickon Creek. He told me all about what he had in mind at my wedding last year and it sounds like it's going to be part Wind in the Willows and part Walt Kelly.
And knowing A-Town, it should prove to be a must read strip!!
Click on the link below to find out more about the strip and about upcoming episodes!! You won't want to miss it:
I have probably mentioned several times in this blog how much of a fan I am of Walt Kelly and his comic creation Pogo. I'm not sure how much many young readers would understand a great deal of the humor of the strip nowadays. It was very much a strip rooted in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. Much of the political humor is based in the McCarthy era and unless you're studying that time period in a history class, I'm not sure how much a young reader would understand the jokes.
Berke Breathed's Bloom County can be seen the same way. Another favorite strip of mine that is very rooted in the 1980's politics and pop culture.
However, it's Kelly's artwork (and Breathed's as well) that transcends time.
A great deal due to the fact that Kelly started out as an artist at Walt Disney from January 6, 1936 to September 12, 1941. And looking at his designs for Pogo Possum and many of his friends in the Okefenokee Swamp, you can definitely see the Disney influence. Mostly in the way he draws the eyes on his character. That was very Disney. He actually contributed to animations like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon.
Ah, well, it's no use prevaricating about the bush. Getting to my initial story (which includes the image above) I had recently gone on a little day trip with Sydney up to Concord MA when I found out my Thursday night class had been canceled due to the weather. We ended up poking around some really great shops one of which was this really cute little book shop called The Barrow Book Store. It was a neat little place with that great smell of used books in the air.
Well, as we were poking around I happened to see in the art and humor section a copy of We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us sitting there on the shelf. My eyes instantly lit up. You can ask Sydney and she will attest to this.
This book is rare to say the least!! If you want to see how rare it is, log onto Amazon.com and you will see the cheapest copy you can get of it starts out at $26.95!!
AND HERE IT WAS SELLING FOR $8!!!!
So naturally I had to get it!!
For those unfamiliar with that phrase coined by Pogo, it was originally for an anti-pollution campaign started by Walt Kelly for the first Earth Day.
Later Kelly had planned on doing it as a short animation with partner and future wife Selby Daley. Kelly had been greatly dissatisfied with Chuck Jones's treatment of his characters in A Pogo Special Birthday Special. Kelly had actually contributed voices for some of the characters as well as some of the story. However, he had mentioned that the story he had written had been completely altered.
I admit to be someone who really liked the special (being an admirer of both Kelly and Jones). And to be fair to Chuck Jones, he got the characters of Pogo closer to the look and the feel of the strip than many comic strips turned animation like Heathcliff or Dennis the Menace in the 1980's.
Kelly actually started doing most of the animation himself. A great deal of the time from his bed since he was very sick at the time. Kelly even recorded many of the voices as well for the animation. The cartoon ultimately went unfinished due to Kelly's ill heath. However, most of the storyboard was used as the basis for the first half of the book version. With the second half being a collection of Kelly's daily Pogo strips that came out at that time.
The 1960's to the 1970's are probably some of Kelly's best artwork. Not only with his own characters but also with many of his caricatures. Likenesses J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew and George Mitchell all appear in the volume.
If you're ever able to obtain a copy of it, I highly recommend you pick it up. It's a great book and a portal into a bygone time. And probably some of Kelly's finest work to date in my opinion!!
I have a real soft spot for Pogo Possum and the rest of the inhabitants of the Okefenokee Swamp. It was the comic strip that first really got me interested in pen and ink artwork. I remember hours upon hours of practicing the way Walt Kelly would do ink the backgrounds in his comic strips as well as his character design.
Kelly started out as an artist for Disney before branching off and doing his own thing with comic books and newspaper strips. But you can see the Disney influence in his style. Especially with Pogo.
This was back in the days when the daily comics were an art form and you weren't trying to fit things into a panel the size of a postage stamp.
It was another comic my Dad got me into through his own love and enthusiasm for the strip. What we both loved the way Walt Kelly would mangle the English language to give his characters a certain "southern hospitality" in the way they talked.
Again, the charm of the strip was not in the punchline in the end but with the way the characters would talk with one another and the inventive words Kelly would create in the same tradition of Popeye and Krazy Kat.
Another artist I love is Chuck Jones. I have probably mentioned it in many of my previous blogs but I would probably go on record in saying that he is by far my favorite animator of all time. Granted not everything he did was a masterpiece. I never liked his Tom and Jerry. But with that said, his great animations outweigh his less successful ones.
So, you can imagine my delight finding out that two of my favorite artists worked together on a half hour animated special called The Pogo Special Birthday Special in 1969.
For years I had wanted to see it. There are only three Pogo animations in existence and I had only seen the claymation I Go Pogo back in the 1980's. Despite having actors like Jonathan Winters, Vincent Price and Arnold Stang, I never cared for it. It had it's moments but I just felt unsatisfied at the end.
I was finally able to get a copy of Kelly/Jones joint venture a couple years ago. I watched it knowing full well that Walt Kelly himself disliked the outcome of the project. It happens sometimes when you have two very distinct artists with two very distinct styles come together. It's not always a match made in heaven because both artists have very definite ideas of how they want it to look.
According to an interview with Disney artist Ward Kimball, in my battered and well-loved copy of Phi Beta Pogo, Kelly was livid how Chuck Jones changed the original script he had written really taking a lot of the teeth out of the story. And what bugged him even more is how Jones gave Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah a humanized face. Apparently when Kimball had dinner with Kelly at a restaurant and asked who okayed this change to the character, Kelly's face turned red and he bellowed, "Waiter! Bring me another bourbon!"
But with all that said, I liked it. Sure, for someone who loves the classic Pogo comic strips it's definitely a watered down version of Pogo. But it's a really enjoyable watered down version.
The Pogo strips were very satirical and loaded with political and environmental messages. A lot of which was a little too grown-up for a younger audience. So, the story written is a cute and a lot of fun.
And in Chuck Jones's defense, he actually sticks very close to the way the Pogo characters look in the comics than a great deal of comic strips adapted to animation.
I remember a Heathcliff and Dennis the Menace series from the 1980's that bore very little resemblance to their respective series's. COMPLETELY changing the character design to some of the incidental characters and adding characters that are nowhere to be found in the comic series.
The characters designs in the Pogo animation looked like the characters from the strip being published at that time and acted in a way that you would expect the characters to act.
What's also a great deal of fun watching the special is Walt Kelly and Chuck Jones practically voice every character with the exception of a few.
Kelly is relatively good doing the voices of PT Bridgeport, Albert Alligator and Howland Owl. Actually, while he's doing PT Bridgeport and Albert, I could have confused him for Mel Blanc. Who did a great deal of work for Chuck Jones both with Warner Brothers and some work with the cartoons he did for MGM.
Jones isn't as good as Kelly is voicing multiple characters. Although, I thought his voice seemed strangely suitable for Porkypine. It should be said, Porky has always been a character I've felt kind of a kinship with. I think mostly because I can see a lot of my own personality in him. A bit prickly, a little bit of a loner but deep down very well meaning and appreciative of the people in my life who have been there for me.
Or something like that.
You also have the brilliant June Foray providing the voices of Pogo Possum and Mam'selle Hepzibah.
Although there are some weak spots in the animation, which I imagine was due to cost and you really could not do something Fantasia quality on a television program budget at that point in time. But compared to many cartoons being churned out at that time which were increasingly becoming blander and shoddier looking The Pogo Special Birthday Special is quite good and very stylishly done for that time as far as the art and animation is concerned.
If I have peaked your curiosity some thoughtful person was very kind to post the special on Youtube. Try and keep an opened mind watching it and look at it from an art appreciation perspective.
