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Today, August 25, would have been
Walt Kelly's 110th birthday. One of the greatest comic creators of all time, he has long been a particular favorite of ours here at DCM, and we are celebrating the day with a release of several new issues of his classic
Peter Wheat giveaways series, both by him and his successors
Del Connell and Al Hubbard.
Walt Kelly's career started with some work in the some of the earliest comics put out by DC, even before the debut of Superman. Kelly soon left comics behind for a few years, though, to work as an animator at
Walt Disney Productions in 1935. He worked on 'Pinocchio' and 'Dumbo' as well as some short features. He left Disney during the animators strike of 1941 to avoid choosing sides when he had friends on both sides. He went back into comics working for
Western, who at the time was best known for producing books for Dell, although they worked for others as well. At Western he created his earliest version of
Pogo for
Animal Comics (click to go to them), wrote and drew nearly the entire run of the
Our Gang feature, and did several adaptations for Disney, including 'Pinocchio', making him one of the few creators to work on both the animation and comic book versions of the same story.
(Note: DCM has several Walt Kelly Collections in our Archives section. See the end of this intro for direct links to some wonderful Kelly archives) He was successful enough that when he did books entirely on his own, including several 'Mother Goose' issues of
Four Color Comics , he was one of the very few comic creators to get their name featured on the cover of a book. This would have been an obvious move when he worked on the Pogo comic book in the 50's, but was extraordinary during the 40's when he didn't have a syndicated strip to his name. Most importantly to our interests today, he also was the artist on a character created as the mascot for a bread company during the late 40's and early 50's,
Peter Wheat.For anyone out there unfamiliar with Peter Wheat bread - "Peter Wheat was a bread brand owned by Baker’s Associates during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The giveaway comic books Adventures of Peter Wheat and Peter Wheat News were produced through Western Publishing and were given out primarily by home delivery drivers, but also available in bakeries. One fan remembers walking by the local Peter Wheat bakery to and from school, when employees would hand out comics to the passersby. Both Adventures and News were issued monthly, beginning in April 1948."
-Steve Thompson/Spring Hollow BooksI first discovered the Peter Wheat books back in 2009, and fell in love with the series almost instantly. I had no idea how scarce the material was, though: even now, 15 years after I started collecting, there are over a quarter of the Peter Wheat News issues I've never even seen what the covers look like. Other items, like the
4-in-1 Fun Packs and the small size
Bell Bakery issues, seem to be even rarer.
**If ANYONE out there owns some Peter Wheat material they might be willing to share with the world PLEASE reply in this topic or use the Contact Us link to reach out. If you can't scan it we have trusted scanners that can do it for you. We would dearly love to share more of this charming title with the everyone.Kelly went above and beyond when he worked on Peter Wheat, turning what could have been a throwaway promotional book into an absolutely extraordinary fantasy book. I would much rather you just go and read the books rather than me try to explain it, but Kelly provided some exceptional art and storytelling, creating an absolutely incredible run of comics. Just to mention one aspect, the character development of Dragonel is perhaps one of the most impressive character arcs in all of the golden age of comics. The four part story in Adventures of Peter Wheat 24-27 is one of the great adventure epics of the era, as well. There were actually two main Peter Wheat series running concurrently,
Adventures of Peter Wheat being a 16 page monthly comic, and
Peter Wheat News being an advertising flyer with a four page comic created by taking the back page of the flyer and folding it in half. The stories in Peter Wheat News were generally three part serials, creating a 12 page story. Faced with the smaller format and lower page count, Kelly leaned slightly more into the bakery theme, with many of the News stories involving the bakery to lesser or greater degree. When Kelly left to work on his Pogo strip, the series was turned over to
Del Connell and Al Hubbard, who managed to carry on extremely well, even if they didn't have the epic arcs that Kelly manged.
I'm afraid I don't know much about Del Connell, other than that he was an extraordinarily prolific comic writer, who received the Bill Finger Award for Achievement in Comic Book Writing in 2011, just a few weeks before he passed away. Al Hubbard, by contrast, is one of the great little-heralded artists of Western. He never quite got the recognition that Walt Kelly, Carl Barks, or even John Stanley got for their work, but he is very well regarded by a lot of fans for his work on 'Mary Jane & Sniffles' in the
Looney Tunes comic book, and his run on 'Scamp' for
Disney comics.
Please enjoy our flood of Peter Wheat books by these three great creators, and we plan to have some more Peter Wheat material coming out on
Wednesdays over the next few weeks, hence the "Peter Wheat Wednesdays" in our banner! I would like to extend a huge thank you to
Yoc, Darwination, and
Robb K from the CB+ forums for their contributions to releases today!
- OtherEric
Here are direct links to
rmdavidson's Walt Kelly collections. Anyone reading this will want to check them out as well. They are packed with wonderful Walt Kelly stories!
Walt Kelly in Santa Claus Funnies 1942-1949 - Part 1 (Dell)Walt Kelly in Santa Claus Funnies 1942-1949 - Part 2Walt Kelly's Animal Mother Goose Part 1 (Dell)Walt Kelly's Animal Mother Goose Part 2Walt Kelly's Animal Mother Goose Part 3Walt Kelly's The Brownies Collection (now complete)(Dell)And
OtherEric and Yoc have done some other fun collection you might find interesting at these links:
Dell Scribbly Collection! The, (ver2)Joe Maneely at CharltonPhantom Lady Archives vol 3 - The Ajax YearSpacehawk, The Complete Collection -part1 (Novelty)Spacehawk, The Complete Collection -part2 (Novelty+Centaur)
