Author and cartoonist Selby Daley Kelly died over the July 4th weekend [Correction: two weeks ago] in Northern California. She had been ill for some time and the cause of death is reported as complications from a stroke. Selby was 87, having been born August 13, 1917 in Boulder, Colorado. She later moved to Los Angeles and had a long career in animation, commencing with a job in the ink and paint department at Walt Disney Studios in 1936. She was reportedly an inker on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and worked her way up to the post of assistant animator before she left Disney as a result of the 1941 strike — the same event that drove her future husband, Walt Kelly, away from Disney animation and into the comic book, and later the comic strip business.
Selby later worked for all the major Hollywood studios, including stints at MGM, Walter Lantz, Warner Brothers and even George Pal's Puppetoons, for which she did design work. She was also highly active in the Screen Cartoonists Guild.
In the sixties, she worked for Hanna-Barbera, Jay Ward and Bill Melendez, and was employed by Chuck Jones in 1969 when he directed and co-produced a TV special, The Pogo Birthday Special, based on Walt Kelly's popular newspaper comic strip. There, she wound up spending enough time with Kelly that a romance blossomed. She became his third wife and he became her second husband but, sadly, they only had a few years together. Kelly died in 1973 and Selby, who had been helping him with his work during his illness, continued the Pogo strip for almost two years with the aid of Stephen Kelly, Don Morgan, letterer Henry Shikuma and several other hands. Thereafter, she wrote, assembled and/or supervised several collections of Pogo reprints, including the 1992 Pogo Files for Pogophiles and supervised other Pogo-related projects that brought joy to many a Walt Kelly fan.