Howard Cruse on Walt Kelly and word balloons

CRUSE: ...the shape of a word balloon is a very real artistic element in a comic strip. You don't just draw it in sloppily. You think about what kind of balloons a character's going to have, and how you're going to position them.
RINGGENBERG: The master of that was Walt Kelly. Some characters in Pogo talked in their own distinctive typefaces.
CRUSE: Yeah, he was brilliant. An exciting experience when I joined the Cartoonists Guild here in New York was hanging out with Selby Kelly, his second wife.

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RINGGENBERG: Didn't she do some work on Pogo?
CRUSE: She continued the strip for a while after his death. I think she did as fine a job as anybody who wasn't Walt Kelly could've done. She was tuned in to his sensibility, and a lot carried over.