Friday, July 18, 2008

National Cartoonist Society Profile: Walt Kelly



Offered here is the short NCS bio of one of the most important and influential strip cartoonist of our time, Walt Kelly, and his superb funny animal feature, Pogo with all its backwoods wit and political satire, never seen before or since... Born in beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised to a crouch in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Went to school in Bridgeport, but caught nothing much so I went on to factory work plus intermittent starvation in newspapers...escaped to California in search of food at Walt Disney...did not find any after six years. Returned to New York and set out to (HA) improve comic books...did a bit of time with foreign language unit of the Armed Forces Institute...despite this the allies won the war, after which Pogo comic books went into strips via the New York Star of which I was Art Director, Senior Editor, Political Cartoonist and match game champ...loaded with this big talent, the Star folded...Pogo went into national orbit in 1949...now has 1560 papers, take or give 1000.

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