Friday 30 December 2011

Mark O'Polo by Gottfredson

Picked up these items earlier this year.
As some of you might know that legendary Mickey Mouse artist Floyd Gottfredson had plans for another comic strip of his own called Mark O'Polo. He was influenced by E.C. Segars Popeye and probably also by Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon. (Judging by the surviving concepts and plots.)
The lot included the following items: a sketch of the main character Mark O'Polo, a penciled logotype and a five page plot titled "Baby Elephant Baby-Sitter" stuffed in a envelope.

Has anyone ever seen a finished or even pencilled Mark O'Polo daily?

5 comments:

ramapith said...

Not I, said the mouse. (-:

Ger Apeldoorn said...

So what year was it?

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

Ger:
I don't know when Gottfredson did these Mark O'Polo drawigns/plots.
I have assumed that he did these in the 70's. But for all I know he could have worked on these already in the 50's or 60's.
If I remeber right Gottfredson made a note to himself "Read Segar" that he repeated over and over in one of his Mark O'Polo note books. Nostalgia Press published their Popeye reprint book in 1971 so I guess at least part of this material was made after that book was published.
If anyone knows for sure please leave a comment.

Mesterius said...

Hmmm, I thought Gottfredson worked on developing Mark O'Polo as late as the 1980s... at least that's what I heard somewhere.

Anyway, thanks for sharing these! It's great to finally get a few glimpses of what this strip might have looked like:)

Ankkalinnan Pamaus said...

I remember reading somewhere that Gottfredson made these plans for the new strip right after he retired from Mickey Mouse strip. 1975.