Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.