Send in the elephants. Kelly, during this era, had Peanie and some other elephants in the strip quite a lot. It's amazing how he was able to draw such a massive creature in such a compact way. I mean, an elephant in a tree (!) with space left over! I'm purposely posting these dailies in a large format. Click on them and revel in the ink hatching. And you can see over there on the right on the tree where the hatch lines don't quite touch is where the extra art wasn't in the daily.
Keep in mind that 1966 was the tail-end of the national elephant jokes craze, also! You know--How can you tell when an elephant's been in your refigerator? When you've got footprints in the butter!
ReplyDeleteKelly has a long history playing with elephants; he did a fairly long sequence of "elephunnies" in Animal Comics. Those are mostly one page gags, but there was an 8-page story in Animal Comics 22 as well. That's another bit of fascinating work; now that I think of it: The 8 pager is completely in pantomime, no dialog or captions other than the title. In 1946! Kelly doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves for innovation.
ReplyDelete