Fairy Tale Parade #6
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFairy Tale Parade #6 is a mid-run showcase for Walt Kelly at a pivotal moment in his development as a cartoonist — the period just before he introduced Pogo to the world in Dell's Animal Comics later that same year. The issue demonstrates the full breadth of Kelly's visual storytelling: his original sprite characters 'Bright and Glum' (day and night personified) sit alongside his bold adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen and Arabian Nights source material, revealing the warm anthropomorphic sensibility that would define Pogo. Collectors and comics historians prize the Fairy Tale Parade run as a rare case of Golden Age children's comics that genuinely aspired to the illustrative tradition of Rackham and Dulac — a quality that set Dell's line apart from superhero fare dominating wartime newsstands.
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The series was the brainchild of Oskar Lebeck, Dell/Western Publishing's German-born art director and managing editor, who had himself written and illustrated children's books in the 1930s and saw comics as a vehicle for bringing the qualities of traditional illustrated storybooks to young readers. Lebeck hired Walt Kelly — fresh from his years animating Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo at Walt Disney Productions — and gave him creative latitude across covers, lead stories, and original characters. The indicia of issue #6, like others in the run, formally credits copyright to Lebeck himself, underlining his central editorial ownership of the project. Contributing artists Arthur Jameson, Jon Small, L. Bing, and Gaylord Du Bois rounded out the collaborative studio atmosphere Lebeck cultivated.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1943 by Dell Publishing Co., with copyright formally registered in the name of editor Oskar Lebeck.
- Cover art and lead stories drawn by Walt Kelly, who was simultaneously developing Pogo — a character who would debut in Dell's Animal Comics the same year.
- Story lineup includes Kelly's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's 'Big Claus and Little Claus,' 'The Wise Men of Gotham,' and an original Kelly creation, 'The Tale of Rufus Redfox' (scripted by Gaylord Du Bois with Kelly art), explaining why foxes have white-tipped tails.
- Other stories in the issue: 'The Sleeping Beauty' (art by Arthur Jameson, from Charles Perrault), 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' (art by Jon Small, from The Arabian Nights), 'Prince Joel,' and 'The Nose Tree' (art by L. Bing, from the Brothers Grimm).
- The 'Bright and Glum' story — featuring sprites personifying day and night — contains a caricature of Disney animator Ward Kimball as the character Glum, per community research documented at goldenagecomics.co.uk.
- The series ran for nine issues (1942–1944) before Dell continued its fairy-tale output via the Four Color Comics anthology series.
- Material from this issue and others in the Fairy Tale Parade run was later reprinted in Walt Kelly's Fairy Tales (IDW, 2015) and Walt Kelly's Fables and Funnies (Dark Horse, May 2016), bringing Kelly's Golden Age work to modern audiences.
- The series is credited by comics critics as an early precursor to fantasy-themed comics, offering one of the few sustained fantasy anthologies on the Golden Age newsstand outside of the Prince Valiant newspaper strip.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Famous Fairy Tales #[1944] (1944), Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies #[nn] (2000), The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics #[nn] (2009), Walt Kelly's Fairy Tales #[nn] (2015), Walt Kelly's Fables and Funnies #[nn] (2016)
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