Pogo

Grew up reading this series. Now I have a permanent copy of my own. Good price and great product for comics junkies.

For anyone who grew up with Pogo and Walt Kelly, this is a fun way to recall child-hood memories. It is also an excellent reminder of truly good cartoon drawing and writing. Much of the humor is as sharp today as it was when it was written, 40-50 years ago. Read, remember & enjoy.

'Pogo' by Walt Kelley was one of the highlights of our Sunday rotogravure comics pages back in the 1940s and 1950s, right alongside 'Mandrake the Magician', Prince Valient', 'Little Orphan Annie', 'Mutt and Jeff', 'Alley Opp', 'L'tl Abner', 'Nancy', and 'Henry'. In my early years, I usually gave it no more than a quick bewildering glance, with no more interest than I gave to 'Mary Worth', since I generally found the language to be just a bit 'ODD'. At that time, I had little appreciation that the dialect was all part of the joke, and I especially didn't appreciate the cleverly veiled references to current politics and culture. This way way more subtle than 'Doonesbury' is today. But then, with McCarthy and the HUAC, you had to be just a bit guarded. While there is no question that this volume gives us material before the satire really kicked in, I still find it, unlike some other reviewers, to be at least as entertaining as 'Doonesbury' and 'Dilbert' combined. By the way, it took me almost 10 years of reading this column as a pre-teenager to realize that Pogo was an opossum. But there is no 'playing possum' on these pages.

Fans of Kelly's political satire won't find much to chew on in this volume. But that doesn't mean it's not a collection of great comics from the middle of last century. Kelly was apparently still developing his characters and his animal-infused "town" of Okefenokee Swamp in 1949. But the principle characters appear: of course Pogo and Albert, and Howland Owl, Porkypine, and the Rackety Coons. Along with innumerable transient characters such as the short lived Abou Ben Franklin (an electric eel that helps run the radio), Gopher Yerguns the rowdy gopher cowboy and his comedy team of Caterpiggles, the scheming Jacques Frost who impersonates a government agent and convinces Albert and Pogo to paint the tress and themselves, and the annual thanksgiving turkey (in disguise for obvious reasons). Even without the politics, Volume 2 has plenty to offer. It all begins with the hunt for Beauregard. A lady bug hides in Albert's police hat and causes confusion; Albert and the bloodhound trade roles which gives Albert a chance to showcase his dog impersonation skills ("Birch! Birch!"); Porkypine figures out what a banjo is for after Boll Weevil serenades him; Porkypine tries out another fabulous joke while Churchy LaFemme gets mistaken for a lady (worms were dumped on his head); Howland Owl and Churchy LaFemme try to abscond with Albert's cigars (which involves Pogo dressing in drag); the first World Series; Wiley Cat and Seminole Sam try to cook Pogo for dinner - this sequence is insane - Pogo escapes by imitating a goat (with a magazine that reads "Bock is Back"), and by putting the kettle over his head and being mistaken for a turtle - this sequence ends with what might be the best strip of the volume: Churchy LaFemme attempts to summarize the plot while eating a "san'witch" ("Then -- mlfgob glf - haw wobs goolop - hug rotksplk"); Porkypine then tries to comfort Pogo by telling him "We never know who's next" and "if I was there an' they cooked you, I would not of eaten any."; the volume ends with Albert's run-in with a moose. There are plenty of good strips here. The introduction contains information about Walt Kelly's tenure at Walt Disney studios. R.C. Harvey (who also wrote "The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History") gives a rundown of some of the politics of the day: Truman won re-election, the red scare scared the pants off of Americans (Kelly, like others, chose to remain silent about it), Mao came to power in China, Alger Hiss gets convicted for spying, etc. All of this while Pogo slowly developed into one of the best comics ever to grace newsprint. Great things take time. Walt Kelly wasted none of it, even in Pogo's formative years. Dive in and witness the development of a great comic strip.

Argh, at the idea that vol 1 (and 3) "approach" the interest of the later work. As with Peanuts, the early stuff is less self-conscious and perhaps less contrived - - the ground was so little-plowed at that time. I guess it IS true that the political references, when one comes to McCarthy & the surrounding figures, are hard for people who weren't alive then to follow - but the earliest stuff is the least allegorical. Read & enjoy.