On January 12, 1966 I had the great fortune to meet Walt Kelly and spend 30 minutes or so talking with him, one on one, in the comfort of a university chapel parlor.
I was only 13 at the time, and my parents had brought me to a lecture Kelly had given earlier that evening. My dad introduced me to him, so that I could avoid any potential awkwardness. Kelly looked at some of my drawings and seemed to have genuine interest in who I was and why I was the only adolescent in the audience. I must have explained myself fairly well, because he invited me to stay and chat more with him after the rest of the audience left. We sat in comfy easy chairs across a tea table and Kelly talked with me as if I was a college student. He was full of energy, brimming with funny anecdotes and curious about my thoughts on cartooning.
We talked about artistic style and how that evolves for an artist. And I told him that as much as I admired his Pogo work, I was even more infatuated with his early fairy tale work. This seemed to surprise and delight him.
At one point he stopped and looked at me with a conspiratorial sidelong glance and I thought, uh oh, what have I done wrong. But he smiled slyly and proceeded to tell me of the upcoming sequence of Pogo that would get under way in the summer, involving what he considered to be a prehistoric fairy tale.
He described it vividly, gesturing with drawings in the air, as I sat spellbound. At one point he pulled a small notebook from his jacket and made a couple of quick notes to himself, seemingly of ideas he was spontaneously coming up with.
At the end of our time together he drew a quick sketch of Pogo for me and inscribed it, the one shown above. We parted warmly as he told me to always stay interested in fairy tales.
The upcoming story sequence Kelly told me about was actually slowly starting in the Sunday comics just 3 days before I talked with him, but wouldn't kick into high gear until June.
Well, of course I collected the Pogo strip every day at that time, and have saved them all these years. In recent times I wasn't sure what to do with them other than to store them. But with the fun I've had with my other 'blogs, I concluded that this sequence deserved its own 'blog. All in all it lasts over a year, but I will begin with Sundays, starting at the first week of 1966. Then I will post dailies as well, starting in June, when the art gets really interesting.
This is my tribute to Kelly and his prehistoric fairy tale.
Since I started scanning all these strips I've noticed how prevalent the color yellow is for the backgrounds for most of these Sundays. I don't know if Kelly did the color guides, but whoever, yellow can be overdone y'know. This strip case in point.
Now we're gettin' somewhere. Enter the elemump, that is to say, the ephalump, mm, the big guy.
This strip and the next one coming up were already posted on my Pictorial Arts stuff. When I posted it over there I had no idea I would be doing an entire blog for this storyline, but they belong here with this chronological continuity. 
By now, you may be saying, 'Wait a minute, I signed on for a trip to Pandemonia, this stuff is just swamp critters acting goofy, cuttin' up and going nowheres.'
Yes, the story is moving along quickly now, isn't it folks? Kelly didn't dawdle in his storytelling as much as meandered.
All the hub-bub of Seinfeld being a show about nothing was nothing compared to Kelly's nothing. Kelly was the master of nothing, making nothing into something.
This is the first example of our run that shows the extra panel that is dropped from a tabloid format. It must not have been easy to write in a panel that wasn't necessary, yet would have to carry the story when it did run. This panel is courtesy of Ger Apeldoorn of The Fabulous Fifties.
Happy 1966 everyone! This is where we begin our expedition to Pandemonia.
1966 was indeed a new year for Kelly, as of course it was for all of us who were up and kicking back then. But Kelly had traveled extensively in the previous year and was currently on a speaking circuit when he confessed to me that he was tired and felt he needed to slow down. What he had been drawing had been drawn quickly with minimal attention to detail. But, he said, this year would be different. He was going to spend more time at the board and regain his spirit. He was overweight and breathing a bit hard (we were at high altitude after all), but the twinkle in his eye was blinding as his enthusiasm was infectious. I probably was jumping in my seat as he was describing the upcoming storyline.
Prehysterical Pogo in Pandemonia was a book curiously lacking in enthusiasm or celebration of some of Kelly's finest moments. Other than the cover, there were no special spot drawings (like so many of his other books had), it was abridged and abbreviated from its first run, and Kelly's Foreword did not allude to the contents of the book, except to use the word "Martian" twice. There were no explanations, no insights for the storyline. And apparently it didn't sell well. It is one of the rarer tomes in Kelly's canon of works.
I can only imagine how wonderful it would be for a publisher to come out with a large album of the entire arc, complete with full page, full color three tier Sundays on the recto and six crisp dailies on the verso, with full insight essays, and a clay-coat beautifully designed cover and binding to boot.
Kelly didn't cry over spilt ink, he would quickly dip his brushes into it and dive into a new drawing, creating something new that otherwise might never have existed, due to procrastination or just plain idle hands. Yet he didn't avoid the devil's workshop. Rather he confronted the old bastard and took him to task for his mephistophelian misdeeds. Kelly faced sulfurous dragons of Hades, ready to wield his brush and pen and sometimes typewriter to remind the world that sense could be found in nonsense. Kelly's messages weren't obscure — we were.
Over the years Kelly had an agenda of sorts for prehistoric hijinx and this beautiful ad that he made for Pan Am (with whom he had a professional relationship), appeared in a National Cartoonists Society April dinner booklet, and helps set the stage for our sojourn to Pandemonia.
On January 12, 1966 I had the great fortune to meet Walt Kelly and spend 30 minutes or so talking with him, one on one, in the comfort of a university chapel parlor. 
