Our Gang: 1946-1947 (Vol. 4) (Walt Kelly's Our Gang) [Paperback]

Walt Kelly (Author), Steve Thompson (Editor), Jeff Smith (Cover Design)

Book Description

Series: Walt Kelly's Our Gang

The Little Rascals join a riverboat show!

The Rascals are back in another 100-plus vintage full-color pages of rollicking comedy and high adventure. Created in 1946 and 1947, these stories show Walt Kelly refining the style that would serve him so well for his later masterpiece—Pogo.

Much of this fourth volume is taken up with an extended four-part cycle of stories—almost a graphic novel, really!—in which Froggie and the Gang (including Julip the Goat) ship out with Professor Gravy on his showboat for an engagement downriver, which results (of course) in a series of action-packed adventures involving fisticuffs, gunfire, fireworks, and horse thieves. All this, plus more mundane kid pursuits such as a hotly-contested baseball game.

As always, series editor Steve Thompson is on hand to provide fascinating behind-the-scenes details on these marvelous stories. For anyone who loves those simple, innocent post-war times, the Our Gang stories are as refreshing as a five-cent glass of home-made lemonade on a hot summer day. 112 pages of color comics

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Midway through its seven-year run, Kelly's comic book Our Gang veers even farther from its basis, a long series of movie shorts that ended two years before the earliest stories here were published. The comic's kids barely resemble their cinematic counterparts, and their adventures are weightier as, apparently unrestrained by any parental authority, they confront scam artists and horse thieves and join a rather anachronistic showboat for a tale spanning several issues. Kelly's art occasionally becomes uncharacteristically serious in the gang's genuinely harrowing confrontations with miscreants, which are a far cry from the early Pogo stories he was also drawing at the time. --Gordon Flagg

Review

Ironically, while Our Gang films were [by the 1940s] slick and mannered, in Kelly's comics they regained much of their earlier, unaffected charm. (Booklist )

Our Gang is excellent. You need no knowledge of the films to follow the action, and each issue was self-contained, so you can read it in chunks.... An essay at the beginning of the book puts the stories into the context of their times, very important for any comic book from that era.... Definitely worth a read if you are a fan of old comics that don't involve superheroes. (Laura Gjovaag )

That this series was written and drawn by the great Walt Kelly is icing on the cake for comics fans. Walt Kelly was to the Our Gang comic books what Hal Roach had been to the movie series: creator and godfather. (Leonard Maltin )

Straight-ahead comedy: enjoyable and interesting. (Library Journal )

A sweet, idiosyncratic collection of comics, suitable for nostalgic adults and adventurous kids alike... An exuberant and transportive collection. (Publishers Weekly )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (May 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606993224
• ISBN-13: 978-1606993224
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,288,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Walt Kelly..One in a million, July 3, 2010

By 

Brigadier Victor - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Our Gang: 1946-1947 (Vol. 4) (Walt Kelly's Our Gang) (Paperback)

Walt Kelly and Carl Barks were my two favoprite cartoonists when I was growing up. I loved the Our Gang adventures and as I was quite young at their inception I lost them. Seeing these adventures again after so many years, brings back the youthful excitement I felt when first purchasing them for a whole dime, so long ago. Walt Kelly had a style and technique all his own. He was a master of emotion and gesture. His stories were written to appeal to a 10 or 12 year olds and they did. But the stories still maintained a quality that even adults can appreciate. Kelly did not talk down to the children like so many other cartoonists did and most of us, as kids, appreciated that fact. He could spin a wonderful tale with kids like us and we loved it. I cannot recommend this book any more highly. If you have a speck of youth left, you'll love it.My only criticysm is the quality of the art work inside the book is far superior to its cover. Highly Recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Shrinking Gang and the Growing Artist, September 14, 2010

By 

Brent R. Swanson "coffee shop inspector" (Crooper, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Gang: 1946-1947 (Vol. 4) (Walt Kelly's Our Gang) (Paperback)

At the time the first stories in this volume were published, in the summer of '46, the Our Gang/Little Rascals movie series had been dead for two years, its final episodes being pathetic shadows of what the series had been in its prime. But where those final films came off looking like third-rate "mental hygiene" movies, Walt Kelly's comic book stories took the gang back to slapstick, adventure, and nostalgia.

The Our Gang films in the silent and early sound days had frequently pitted the kids against small-time criminals and con artists. Kelly pits his streamlined gang--Froggie, Red, Bucky, and Janey--against shady types like "the Barrel," Oxtail & the Deacon, and Lucky Leach. These are not perfect stories; partially humanized goats and zany slapstick exist side-by-side with humorless, homicidal criminals. But these stories also show Kelly stretching his abilities as a storyteller. Froggy and Red's multi-episode sojourn aboard Prof. Gravy's showboat is like a summer spent with Huckleberry Finn or Penrod. And with the boys so deep into the South, the reader can't help but search for possums, alligators, and turtles, a population that Kelly was already developing under the concurrent "Animal Comics" banner. They may not be visible here, but Steve Thompson, by way of his introduction, helps us find caricatures of Ward Kimball, John Stanley, and even Kelly himself, among the cast.

Uneven as these stories may be, they're still a lot of fun, and they're an excellent introduction to the one of the greatest humor writers and satirists of the comic book and comic strip mediums. The stories are reproduced as high quality scans from the original comic book printings. Jeff Smith's cover art captures the spirit, if not the line, of Walt Kelly's adaptation of this beloved comedy series.