Adam Blatner

Related to my interest in fantasy characters, I was reading a book about the art of the cartoonist, Walt Kelly, who created the Pogo comic strip, I also noted that in the late 1930s and early 1940s he worked as a Disney artist. (The publishers of this book, Hermes Press, also do many other books on the history of comics.) Anyway, I found out that around 1943 Disney published a book about Gremlins that was illustrated by Kelly, the book written by Roald Dahl (who also was the writer of the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). Walt Kelley’s cartoons “Gremlins” appeared in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories No 34 – 41, between 1943-1944. He worked on the story-board, but soon thereafter left to begin his Pogo comic strip. Here’s one of the gremlin cartoons he did:

(There came a horror film in the 1980s with the title Gremlins, but it’s darker and I don’t like fear-inducing materials.) Fantasy, cartooning, imagination development—all of that resonates with another part of my personality that some may say is not entirely of this world. I was influenced in this by my early exposure to comic books, and charmed by Walt Disney and others over the years.