Books in Walt Kelly's Our Gang series

by Walt Kelly Walt Kelly's spirited and engaging Our Gang harkens back to the days before television, when kids spent most of their time playing outdoors, limited only by each other's imagination and ingenuity. Kelly created dozens of Our Gang stories by the end of its 59-issue run in 1949, the year he quit comics to create the immortal syndicated newspaper strip, Pogo. In Our Gang Volume 3, Kelly hits his stride in supplying eight adventures of the mainstay off-beat personas as well as other whimsical characters, from mad scientists to eccentric animals. Fantagraphics Books has lovingly restored the work from the original comic books, giving Kelly's art a new four-color splendor! With a cover by Jeff Smith!

by Walt Kelly Walt Kelly, perhaps best known for Pogo, illustrated a fifty-nine issue run of comic book stories starring the irrepressible film urchins - the "real-life" characters of MGM's durable short-film series, Our Gang (a.k.a. "The Little Rascals"). Revel in the toothy splendor of Walt Kelly's brushwork. With an introduction by film historian Leonard Maltin!

The Rascals are back in another 100-plus vintage full-color pages of rollicking comedey 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 much 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 5-cent glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.