By Walt Kelly (Innovation)
No ISBN
Justifiably revered for his brilliant newspaper strip Pogo, and perhaps even his wonderful Our Gang tales, the incredible Walt Kelly also has a pretty strong claim to owning the traditional childhood Christmas. From 1942 until he abandoned comic-books for newsprint he produced stories and magazines dedicated to the season of Good Will for West Coast publishing giant Dell. Santa Claus Funnies and Christmas with Mother Goose were a Holidays institution in both their Four Color and Dell Giant incarnations and the sheer beauty and charm of Kelly’s work defined what Christmas should be for two generations. Kelly transferred his affinity for the best of all fantasy worlds to the immortal Pogo but still was especially associated with the Festive season. Many publications sought out his special touch. Even the Christmas 1955 edition of Newsweek starred Kelly and Co on the cover.
Thanks to Eclipse Comics some of this fabulous work resurfaced in the late 1980s and this slim book of reprints was put together after their collapse by the equally gone and just as much-missed Innovation outfit.
It starts as it positively must with an adaptation of Clement C. Moore’s inevitable classic poem ‘The Night Before Christmas’ before continuing with the delightful ‘Ticky Tack the Littlest Reindeer’ then the story of ‘Santa’s First Helper’ and the crazily captivating ‘Jeminy’s Christmas’ which proves that even farmyard animals need to be sure that they’re not naughty but nice. ‘Santa’s Story’ is a rather boisterous and action-packed romp with giants and fairy Queens which sets the scene for the concluding ‘How Santa Got his Red Suit’ which, augmented by a couple of pages of animal antics rhymes and celebratory articles by Betsy Curtis and Maggie Thompson, makes for a perfect Christmas package to start your kids on the road to comics addiction.
It absolutely baffles me that Kelly’s unique and universally top-notch Christmas tales – and Batman’s too for that matter – are not re-released every November for the Yule spending spree. Christmas is all about nostalgia and the good old days and there is no bigger sentimental sap on the planet than your average comics punter. And once these books are out there their supreme readability will quickly make converts of the rest of the world.
© 1990 the Estate of Walt Kelly. Cover art © 1990 the Innovative Corp.