{"id":28442,"date":"2023-08-13T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=28442"},"modified":"2023-08-11T16:27:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T16:27:35","slug":"pogo-the-complete-syndicated-comics-strips-volume-1-through-the-wild-blue-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2023\/08\/13\/pogo-the-complete-syndicated-comics-strips-volume-1-through-the-wild-blue-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comics Strips volume 1 – Through the Wild Blue Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"\"\"
\nBy Walt Kelly<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-56097-869-5 (HB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born on August 25th<\/sup> 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as both artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post<\/strong>. Moving to California in 1935, he joined the Disney Studio, working on shorts and features like Dumbo<\/strong>, Fantasia<\/strong> and Pinocchio<\/strong>\u2026 until the infamous animators\u2019 strike in 1941.<\/p>\n

Refusing to take a side, Kelly moved back East and began drawing comic books – primarily for Dell Comics, who had the Disney funnybook license. Despite his glorious work on such humanistic classics as the movie tie-in Our Gang<\/a><\/strong>, Kelly much preferred anthropomorphic animal and children\u2019s fantasy (like Walt Kelly\u2019s Santa Claus Adventures<\/a><\/strong>) and created Albert the Alligator<\/em> and Pogo Possum<\/em> for Animal Comics<\/strong> #1 (cover-dated December 1942). He sagaciously retained the copyrights in the ongoing tale of two Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine<\/em>. Although the black kid soon vanished, the animal stars stayed on until 1948 when Kelly became art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On October 4th<\/sup> 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast began their careers on the funny pages, appearing six days a week until the periodical folded in January 1949.<\/p>\n

Although a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its run – included in full at the rear of this magnificent tome – the first glimmers of the increasingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary began to be seen\u2026<\/p>\n

This first of 12 volumes tracks the ascent of the scintillating, vastly influential strip; don\u2019t believe me, just listen to Gary Trudeau, Berke Breathed, Bill Watterson, Jeff McNally, Bill Holbrook, Mark O\u2019Hare, Alan Moore, Jeff Smith and even Goscinny & Uderzo and our own Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, whose wonderful strip The Perishers<\/strong> owes more than a little to the sublime antics of the Okefenokee Swamp citizenry\u2026<\/p>\n

After The Star<\/strong> closed, Pogo<\/strong> was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate and launched on May 16th<\/sup> 1949. A colour Sunday page debuted January 29th<\/sup> 1950 and both were produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death on October 18th<\/sup> 1973 (and even beyond, courtesy of his talented wife and family\u2026)<\/p>\n

At its peak the strip appeared in 500 papers in 14 countries whilst book collections (which began in 1951) number nearly 50 and have collectively sold 30 million copies. This volume includes every Star <\/strong>strip, the Dailies from inception to December 30th<\/sup> 1950, plus the Sundays – in their own full colour section – from January 29th<\/sup> to December 31st<\/sup> 1950, plus supplementary features including a Foreword<\/em> from columnist Jimmy Breslin, an Introduction<\/em> by biographer Steve Thompson, a week-by-week highly detailed contents section, useful guide \u2018About the Sundays\u2019 <\/em>by Mark Evanier and an invaluable context and historical notes feature \u2018Swamp Talk\u2019 <\/em>by the amazing R.C. Harvey.<\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s genius and gift was the ability to beautifully, vivaciously draw comedic, tragic, pompous, sympathetic characters of any shape or breed and make them inescapably human and he used that gift to blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre<\/em>. The hairy, scaly, furry, feathered, slimy folk depicted here are inescapably us, elevated by burlesque, slapstick, absurdism and all the glorious joys of wordplay – from puns to malapropisms to raucous accent humour – into a multi-layered hodgepodge of all-ages accessible delight.<\/p>\n

In later volumes Kelly set his bestial cast loose on such timid, defenceless victims as Senator Joe McCarthy<\/em>, J. Edgar Hoover<\/em>, the John Birch Society<\/em>, Richard Nixon<\/em> and the Ku Klux Clan<\/em>, but he starts off small here, introducing gently bemused Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant Albert, dolorous Porkypine<\/em>, obnoxious turtle Churchy<\/em> La Femme<\/em>, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy<\/em>, carpet-bagging Seminole Sam Fox<\/em>, pompous (not) know-it-all Howland Owl<\/em> and a multitude more in gags and extended epics ranging from assorted fishing trips, building an Adam Bomb, losing and finding other people\u2019s children, electioneering, education, kidnapping, the evil influence of comic books, Baseball season, why folks shouldn\u2019t eat each other, Western cow punchers, cows punching back, New Years Resolutions, public holidays and so much more\u2026<\/p>\n

The Sundays also opened with one-off gags but soon evolved into convoluted, mesmeric continued sagas such as the search for the Fountain of Youth, building a school and keeping it filled, Albert elected Queen of the Woodland by elf-like forest fauns – and why that was ultimately a very bad thing indeed\u2026<\/p>\n

Timeless and magical, Pogo<\/strong> is a true giant not simply comics, but also of world literature, and this magnificent edition should be the pride of every home\u2019s bookshelf and digital library.
\nPOGO Through the Wild Blue Wonder and all POGO images, including Walt Kelly\u2019s signature \u00a9 2011 Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. All other material \u00a9 2011 the respective creator and owner. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Walt Kelly (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-56097-869-5 (HB\/Digital edition) Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born on August 25th 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as both artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. Moving to California in 1935, he joined the Disney Studio, working on shorts and features like Dumbo, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comics Strips volume 1 – Through the Wild Blue Wonder”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[113,78,125,97,111,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-comic-strip-classics","category-humour","category-kids-all-ages","category-satirepolitics","category-world-classics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7oK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28442"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28449,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28442\/revisions\/28449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}