Walt Kelly The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo HCMedia Release -- The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes the authors of Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo on Tuesday, July 3, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo (Hermes Press, May 2012) is an exhaustive—but never exhausting— look at the art and career of this amazing comic artist. From his days at Disney working on such films as Snow White, Fantasia, and Dumbo to his work for Dell comics culminating with Pogo—and beyond—this full-color coffee-table art book is packed with rare and beautiful examples of original and often rarely or never-before-seen artwork, including Kelly's comic book and strip art, book covers, and animation art. Also presented for the first time in print is a complete interview with Ward Kimball, one of Disney's "Nine Old Men," sharing an inside look at Kelly and the Disney studio, as well as a complete, full-color Pogo Sunday sequence. Informative, scholarly yet approachable articles on Kelly's life and work are also featured.

The four authors of this book—Thomas Andrae, Carsten Laqua, Mark Burstein, and Scott Daley—will be doing a short introduction, Q&A session, and a book signing at the Cartoon Art Museum on Tuesday, July 3, starting at 7:00pm.

Popular culture historian Thomas Andrae co-wrote Batman and Me with Bob Kane (1989); Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book (2006); Siegel and Shuster's Funnyman, the First Jewish Superhero (2010); Creators of the Superheroes (2011); and Masters of Comic Art and Men of Steel: Siegel and Shuster and the Birth of the Superhero (both forthcoming). He teaches at Cal State, East Bay.

Comics scholar and art dealer Carsten Laqua has written (in German) As Mickey Fell under the Nazis: Walt Disney and Germany (1992) and Donald Duck … and the Duck Has Become Human: The Graphic and Poetic Work of Carl Barks (2007), co-curated two multi-museum exhibitions on Barks, and lectures about comics at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Mark Burstein has collected Kelly since 1958, and dealt Pogo original art since 1990. He wrote Much Ado: The POGOfenokee Trivia Book (1988), edited The Complete Pogo Comics for Eclipse (1989–1990), and was co-curator of Pogo's Golden Anniversary show at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco (1990–91).

Scott Daley is the son of Selby Kelly, Walt's widow, and collaborated with Walt on the soundtrack for the pencil-animation We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us (1972). Scott has done work for Warner Bros., Jay Ward Studios, Animation Graphics and other studios, as well as taught college-level graphic arts and animation.

Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo

Tuesday, July 3, 2012, 7:00-9:00pm

Free and open to the public