See if You Can Help Elmer

Our friend Barry sent over some nice scans of all the pages from Looney Tunes (and Merry Melodies) #4. Nestled on the inside back cover is a swell Walt Kelly rendition of Elmer Fudd, somehow set down in the land of Kelly as the old woman in the shoe! 

What fun, sez I.

Thanks Barry!

Okay, full confession! I colorized the body of the shoe, as it was plain ol' black and white in the comic book and just cried out for something to give it substance. I wonder why they didn't color it.

UPDATE:

I got an email, asking to see the original raw scan. Here it be:

Where Is Everybody? Come Out, Don't Be Afraid!

Woosh, another Sunday comin' up over the horizon. 

And here's another Kandi strip by Kelly from a Looney Tunes issue, scanned by this blog's friend OtherEric, of the Digital Comic Museum, and lovingly shared with us Kelly fanatics. This is an early production for Kelly, with his style only barely formative. Yet it's charming art and worthy of archiving here. 

In fact OtherEric made a point in an email to me that even if certain Kelly stuff might be posted elsewhere, here we like to share BIG scans, and really ALL of Kelly's work belongs here since we've come this far with this much stuff. So be prepared, this blog is going to go on and on, even with stuff you may own or have seen elsewhere. 

LONG LIVE KELLY!

Oh gosh, Eric, I don't remember which Looney Tunes isn this was.

Update from OtherEric:

This one is from Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies #15; it's the last Kandi story according to Overstreet. But I keep hoping there's one more story that I haven't tracked down since there wasn't one in issue 6, I figure the best candidates for that error are 7, 9, and 16.

South Boundbusses

Thanks, as always, to OtherEric of the Digital Comic Museum for supplying more rare Walt Kelly material. I know a lot of you come just for the Pogo stuff, but this is the WHIRLED of Kelly after all, and EVerything Kelly is welcome here.

This particular story is a bit odd, admittedly, drawn in a style that is barely recognizable as Kelly work. But it's there—look at some of the faces and the general demeanor of the characters. And then read the story, delightfully odd, in the vein of George Carlson's delightfully odd Jingle Jangle Comics. But also, as OtherEric points out, who else but Kelly would have his signature joke of locating the story in South Boundbusses?

If all you come for is Pogo, well, see you on Sunday, Kelly Sunday.

Walt Kelly — Looney Tunes #20 —June 1943

Kandi the Cave Kid

Wow, we're really whirling up some esoteric Kelly material here on the Whirled of Kelly, thanks to several of our friends-in-Kelly. OtherEric of the Digital Comic Museum has come through once again with one of Kelly's early comic book stories.

Here's OtherEric to tell us about it:

When Dell Comics started the Looney Tunes comic book in 1941, they had a surprisingly small number of characters to actually work with; a problem that would affect them throughout the 20+ year run. Bugs Bunny had made his official debut only a year before, and mainstays such as the Road Runner would not debut for years yet. So to fill out the pages, they did a couple of different things. They either took minor characters such as Sniffles and Little Pancho Vanilla and gave them their own feature, or they went right ahead and created new characters and stuck them in as filler. The two most notable of these new features were Kandi the Cave Kid and Pat Patsy & Pete, since Walt Kelly worked on both of them.

Pat Patsy & Pete was not originally by Kelly, although he came in to do the last half-dozen stories; and they are delightful in their own way. But Kandi was apparently an original creation of Kelly's; possibly even his first for comics. Looney Tunes #3 showed up in December 1941, nearly a year before Pogo's debut in Animal Comics #1. In some ways it's a precursor to Kelly's Pandemonia; the early Pandemonia story in Animal Comics almost reads like a leftover idea from Kandi, although that story shows a clearly more experienced Kelly at work both in script and art.

As far as I can tell, there were only six Kandi stories — Overstreet says the character appeared in Looney Tunes 3-6, 8, 11, and 15, but I can verify that he wasn't actually in #6. If anybody has seen any of the other early issues, please let us know if he turns up. I hope that 7th story exists, even if the Guide got the issue wrong! I believe only the story from #5 has been seen on the web before now, courtesy of Pappy: click here.

And now we're pleased to show you the story from #8. Enjoy this look at some of Kelly's earliest comic book work.

Walt Kelly — Looney Tunes #8 — ca 1942