This post (and really, posts to come) are dedicated to my good cyber-friend Loren, who, in our correspondence, was instrumental in convincing me to return to regular blogging here on Whirled of Kelly. She is a young art & animation student, whose love of animation finds great inspiration in the art and writing of Kelly.
Her enthusiasm for Kelly's cartooning genius; her appreciation of my curation of this site; her encouragement of the benefit to art students and pros, animation students and pros, and enthusiasts of all kinds has persuaded me to keep up with the hard work of sourcing, scanning, cleaning and curating Kelly's wonderful work.
I've written previously of my (and other people's) recurring night-time dream of wandering into an old bookstore and finding a Pogo book that I had never seen before, though I thought I had completed my collection long ago.
In reality, that dream came true just a few years ago.
I had not made a checklist of Pogo books to check off, but I really thought that I had them all. So when I saw The Pogo Sunday Book on a dusty book shelf, I did an actual double take and poked myself to see if this was one of those dreams.
I don't think the book is all that rare, but I've not seen one before or since the day that I grabbed it up to pay only a few dollars for. It's mostly a reprint of some of the earliest Pogo Sunday strips, heavily edited and in black and white. It was only very recently that I read the intro page by Kelly to realize that the first 10 pages of the book was a 'new' story of 1956 vintage. Looking at it now, I wonder if it was slated to be a story in the Pogo comic books, or 'just' one that Kelly and his assistant George Ward did just for this book.
And it's funny. I haven't had that recurring dream since.
I show the story here for all of you, and especially for Loren!
The back cover portrays the iconic portrait of Pogo
