Walt Kelly was old school: When he drew his comics, he first sketched them out in light blue pencil, and then proceeded to delineate them in his legendarily lush ink line. One huge advantage of this system was that he didn't have to erase any pencil lines (all that erasin' time adds up). Here is a sample.
Another advantage is that it made them really cool looking! Carolyn Kelly, the editor of the POGO series, thinks so too, and since she had a selection of original POGO art from the strip's first years, she scanned several images that featured those blue lines and used them as graphic elements in the first volume.
We would like to continue this design element, but as it happens, Carolyn's stash of POGO originals for the next several years' worth of strips is very limited. So we are hereby putting out a call to all POGO collectors: If you have any originals (dailies or Sundays, but Sundays especially since they often contain such lush imagery), particularly for 1952 through 1955 since that covers our next two volumes (but pretty much any years would be great), do please contact us! In exchange for a scan of your precious collectible, we will be happy to send you copies of the book it appears in.
