WALT KELLY'S ADVENTURES OF PETER WHEAT Volume 2

Walt Kelly's Peter Wheat comics are renowned for their humor and artistic flair, appealing to both children and adults, as well as their incredible scarcity. Never before have they been collected. Between 1948 and 1951, Kelly drew thirty-five issues of The Adventures of Peter Wheat, a sixteen page comic book given away to bakeries to promote Peter Wheat bread. The stories were fairy tales starring Peter Wheat, an elf-sized boy who lived in a hollow tree on the edge of a wheat field where he and the Little Folk battled Dragonel, Queen of the Hornets. While created with kids in mind the mythology spun in these stories is timeless. “Coupled with Kelly's incredible artwork, this series of stories, which run in arcs, are indispensable in Walt Kelly's canon of work,” commented Dr. Thomas Andrae, editor of this series. The Peter Wheat production history was written by Walt Kelly biographer Steve Thompson for this volume. Kelly loved doing fairy tales, and his first comics work was about tiny Lilliputians in New Comics in 1935. His work for Dell's fabulous Fairy Tale Parade is a high point of both his creativity and the world of Golden Age comics. He also further honed his skills working for the Disney studios on Snow White, Pinocchio, The Reluctant Dragon and Dumbo. Just as his work for Dell was diminishing and Pogo was taking off as a comic strip, he was hired to develop a new series for Baker's Associates to promote Peter Wheat Bread and other baked goods. These 16-page stories were constructed as serials, taking place in a lush forest filled with Rackham-esque trees, and peopled by animals and insects who all talked with Peter. Peter becomes the savior of the "little folk". Their enemies were hornet knights, ruled by the nefarious Grand Wizard and his beautiful daughter Dragonel, who eventually is won over to Peter's side and becomes his close companion. (Culled from Thomas Andrae’s excellent introduction.) A second feature talks about Peter as Advertising as Art, with examples of the rare Peter Wheat circus, punch out characters and cool advertising pieces. "The weird thing about Peter What is that he was awesome. He was a toddler the size of a louse...but his adventures were swordclashing killing sprees. He wasn't prancing through meadows and singing about the pep you get from enriched wheat flour. He was punching birds in the face and driving axes into hamsters. There was no whimsy in his fighting style -- he was all business...he was the most powerful 2-inch creature on the planet." -Stephen Thompson The original comics were giveaways and today are extremely scarce, which is one reason why it's taken seven years to put together volume 2. Note: A hardcover edition of this was announced for publication in 2020 but was never published. Vol 1 came out in hardcover AND softcover in 2017. We are looking into restocking the softcover Vol 1 in case you missed it when it appeared in 2017. Hermes has a hardcover limited edition of Volume 2 listed on their website but it is evidently not available to Diamond, us or the trade.