The Funnies Annual No 1 All the Best Newspaper Comics
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Kelly's art is far more detailed than a funny animal strip needed to be and the storylines are much more involved an
After reading The Complete Calvin and Hobbes and Bone in recent years, I decided to give Walt Kelly's Pogo a shot after seeing Bill Watterson and Jeff Smith mention him as a prominent influence. Right out of the gate, I saw what they were talking about. I can see Calvin and the smaller Bone cousins in Pogo and both Hobbes and Smiley Bone have Albert the Alligator in their ancestry.Kelly's art is far more detailed than a funny animal strip needed to be and the storylines are much more involved and flow from one to the next like so much swamp water. The stories have surprisingly dark moments too, like like Albert drinking the tadpole Pogo was babysitting and Albert going on trial for possibly eating a puppy.
Kelly spared no expense in coming up with characters. Pogo, Albert the Alligator, the Rackety-Coons, Howlan Owl, and Porky Pine just scratch the surface. The strip is written in an exaggerated southern dialect, which is a double edged sword. It gives Pogo's Okefenokee Swamp a sense of place but it also makes for some slower reading at times. Of course, Kelly probably didn't intend for the strip to be consumed the way I did, in huge eyefuls at a time.
While I can see why the strip was so influential, it hadn't hit its prime yet as of this volume. The stories are fairly pedestrian, lacking a lot of the political satire that is coming down the pipe in future volumes. I've got the second volume and plan to read it soon but I'm going to knock out some other things first.
Through the Wild Blue Wonder is an enjoyable look at one of the most influential newspaper strips in its embryonic form. Four out of five swallowed tadpoles.
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The writing is also phenomenal, I was actually quite surprised to see how well a lot of the humor and writing hold up. Lots of fabul
Absolute classic. The drawing style is gorgeous, Kelly worked at Disney and you can really feel the animation style/influence on his line-work (fluid, energetic, precise). Regarding technical proficiency, this has to be one of the all-time best drawn newspaper cartoon strips imo. The art is detailed but not asphyxiated by over-drawing, so it strikes a great balance.The writing is also phenomenal, I was actually quite surprised to see how well a lot of the humor and writing hold up. Lots of fabulous gag humor and clever writing in this volume. Albert the Alligator is prob my favorite, he's so ridiculous in the best of ways.
Pogo April 27th, 1950
"A duller piece of information has not come my way since Christmas 1936." That line just kills me! (and the look of dumbstruck realization on Albert's face in panel 3 is hilarious too)
I was told that Walt Kelly was very influenced by George Herriman's classic Krazy Kat comic strip. And in turn, Kelly had a huge influence on a lot of big-time comic strip artists, notably Bill Watterson (and also if I recall correctly the guy who did Bone).
I plan on reading the 2nd volume released by Fantagraphics. I'm curious to see how the later political satire work holds up, imo political humor is very tricky and often times ages poorly (not to mention the political/historical context of the humor can be lost on modern readers). But we shall see! Plus, when I look at samples of the strip, I tend to prefer the earlier style of drawing vs how the later drawings look. Just my personal tastes.
Recommend for fans of comics, comic strips, humor, whimsy, etc.
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Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book Two contains a story written by Alan Moore called "Pog" that originally appeared in Saga of the Swamp Thing #32 and is an obvious tribute to Walt Kelly, who is a legend in both comics and animation. In the Swamp Thing story, analogs for the cast of Pogo come from outer space, looking for a safe place to settle. In a tip of the cap to Pogo's environmentalist overtones the Earth is a more dangerous place than it looks. Moore's tribute t
I'm here because of Swamp Thing.Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book Two contains a story written by Alan Moore called "Pog" that originally appeared in Saga of the Swamp Thing #32 and is an obvious tribute to Walt Kelly, who is a legend in both comics and animation. In the Swamp Thing story, analogs for the cast of Pogo come from outer space, looking for a safe place to settle. In a tip of the cap to Pogo's environmentalist overtones the Earth is a more dangerous place than it looks. Moore's tribute to Albert Alligator is eaten by a real alligator and the Swamp Thing points out to "Pog" how humanity has encroached on the natural world. Pog and his colleagues, not finding what they are looking for, get out of dodge.
However, I didn't have any of this in mind when I read Swamp Thing #32, because while I was aware of Kelly's reputation as a legend in comics, I had never actually read Pogo. There are reasons for this...while I have managed to rip through 15 volumes of Charles Schulz's Complete Peanuts, Peanuts was something I was familiar with from a childhood of reading newspapers--while Pogo made it's debut in The New York Star a few years before we met Charlie Brown and gang, by the time I became a comics connoisseur, I was mostly into superheroes and apart from Peanuts, the only comics I read religiously were Funky Winkerbean (I had the privilege of meeting Tom Batiuk in the fourth grade, since he's from my part of the world--turns out my grandfather was chummy with Tom's dad as well) and Bloom County which always seemed to appeal to my more leftist ideology, although I was unaware that there was a name for my ideology at the time. By the time that I fell in love with comics, Walt Kelly had been dead for over a decade and Pogo didn't appear in my local paper.
The one great thing about any sort of art is that usually it contains the inspirations of the artists that came before. Would there be a Beatles if there wasn't a Buddy Holly or Carl Perkins? Would Bob Dylan be as revered if Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger had never existed? So it is with the comics--there is no John Byrne if there is no Jack Kirby and I'm pretty a lot of newspaper strips wouldn't have existed without Walt Kelly. Again, Bloom County is immediately the strip that comes to mind for me when I read Pogo. While the denizens of Bloom County don't live in a swamp, the meadows of Berke Breathed's eponymous world hearken back to Pogo. Walt Kelly is the one who blazed the trail for artists like Breathed...whereas Walt tried to be a little more subtle with his political commentaries in his first year on Pogo (and it is explained that this was necessary so that Kelly was not seen as biting the hand that fed him) those commentaries are still there (including attacks on Joe McCarthy and the HUAC--thankfully there are annotations at the end of the collection that connect the dots.) By engaging in such commentaries, Kelly makes it possible for Breathed (and to some extent Gary Treadeau) to be much more oblique about their commentaries later.
This sort of dual existence is really the sign of a great artist, and reading Pogo there is no doubt one of the greats, just based on the effort he put into his craft. The reason that it took so long to release the Pogo syndicated strips is that because unlike The Complete Peanuts, much of the source material had to be tracked down from newspaper sources as the originals were long since gone. This is a shame, especially with the Sunday strips, as it is explained by Mark Evanier in a note before the Sunday section (which also explains why the Sunday strips have their own section) that Kelly had exacting standards as to how he wanted the Sunday strips to be colored--something that the printer couldn't always oblige. I'm sure if Kelly was still around to curate this collection, he'd demand his original intent.
Fortunately, the strips do survive in some format that makes this collection possible. Kelly is legendary not just for his art, but for his writing as well. Sometimes, the jokes in Pogo are quite subtle, or take weeks to get to the actual punchline. But what makes Kelly legendary, in my opinion is that the setups are so beautifully rendered and the world of Pogo so rich with its characters (the swamp itself can be considered one--hence why I think Moore found it appropriate for an issue of Swamp Thing) that the punchlines end up being worth the wait.
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"It's interesting to know that the confidence of ignorance has not died out!"It is difficult to convey the importance, for those of you not from the U.S. or who know little of the nation's history of the 1950s-60s, of what the comic strip Pogo represented in American life. Back then the comics pages were as integral to a daily read of the newspaper as the headlines or opinion pages. Ostensibly, they were an escape. In reality, they were a mirror. Had they been in the op-ed pages, they might have
"It's interesting to know that the confidence of ignorance has not died out!"It is difficult to convey the importance, for those of you not from the U.S. or who know little of the nation's history of the 1950s-60s, of what the comic strip Pogo represented in American life. Back then the comics pages were as integral to a daily read of the newspaper as the headlines or opinion pages. Ostensibly, they were an escape. In reality, they were a mirror. Had they been in the op-ed pages, they might have been uncomfortable. But since they were in the "funny pages," there was a buffer, there was a deniability some used to deny it's essential observations about American society.
On the surface, Pogo Possum was one of many characters from the Okefenokee Swamp, along with Albert Alligator, Porky Pine, Churchy La Femme, Deacon Mushrat, Rakety Coon, plus assorted Catterpiggles, Pup Dogs, and butterflies. Their strong Southern accents hid a profound understanding of the world; much like the best of Mark Twain, a literal reading had little to do with the intent and truth. These strips reflected America as it was…and is.
For example, is there anything more timeless than Albert Alligator's comment when he was not considered by his peers to be a member of a jury?: "My Gakes! Does you mean to cast doubt on my impartial bias?" What would Americans be without "impartial bias?"
This volume has the initial nationally syndicated cartoon daily and Sunday strips plus the prior ones from The New York Star that ran in early 1949. I'm so looking forward to the remaining 5 volumes on my shelf.
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So, yeah, I like, admire, and respect Pogo (and all these links would be embedded images, BTW, but for the fact that I can't make them fit here without rendering them illegible). If there's a problem here, it's that this book is not a collection from Pogo's heyday, but rather of the first year of his syndication, and at that time Kelly had yet to differentiate his characters, hone his artistic language, or tighten his gags. There are still gems here. For example, this is typical, though it may be of later vintage. Pork' Pine's introduction as a misanthrope willing to stick himself ("Don't like NOBODY.") is great, as is that of the genius missing-crittur-finder Hound Dog ("Who lost?" "Me."), but in the main these comics feature rambling, inter-nesting stories with many a repeat gag (for example, Albert the alligator is constantly swallowing other creatures by accident without ever digesting them; without the variations on a theme that could make this work as a running gag, this quickly grows tiresome). The characters all speak with the same Foghorn Leghorn drawl-dialect (even the Deacon, whose word balloons are lettered in Gothic), and could easily exchange roles in most panels without harm to the finished product.
Notwithstanding that I didn't find it to be a compelling read,
Wild Blue Wonder is an important and painstakingly compiled work. By all appearances, Fantagraphics and its editors (including Walt's daughter) have been exhaustive in exhuming and restoring Kelly's output. This is intended as the first of a multi-volume set that will ultimately render everything that Kelly produced. This volume also includes (albeit as backmatter) Pogo's big head start in the New York Star, some of which would be reused and redrawn upon Pogo's acceptance for syndication, and it's interesting to flip back and forth between the two to better understand Kelly's choices (assuming these were at all deliberate... the editors noted that the author tended not to save his originals, so in some cases I guess differences may possibly have been more an accidental consequence of working from memory than deliberate rethinking of the subject matter).All in all, I think this volume makes an excellent book for researchers, completists, and die-hard fans. For those wondering what all the hubbub was about, see if you can dig up a copy of Prehysterical Pogo... or just wait to see if the editors catch up to include Kelly's best.
...more Admittedly don't quite get a few of the gags, probably due to my deficiency of whimsicality.
Mark Evanier's comments on the Sundays greatly appreciated.
Really getting into it with the color Sundays.
Enjoyed the 1948 limited exposure strips from New York Star, some of which were reworked when syndicated.
RC Harvey's chronological notes put the goings-on into historical and Kelly personal context.
An overall highly admirable exemplary Awed by the magnitude of this man's talent and how he used his pen.
Admittedly don't quite get a few of the gags, probably due to my deficiency of whimsicality.
Mark Evanier's comments on the Sundays greatly appreciated.
Really getting into it with the color Sundays.
Enjoyed the 1948 limited exposure strips from New York Star, some of which were reworked when syndicated.
RC Harvey's chronological notes put the goings-on into historical and Kelly personal context.
An overall highly admirable exemplary package.
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Kelly works multiple gags in nearly every strip; sometimes they will meet in
I've always read newspaper comics, but only began to explore back history in the last three years. I think this is the best comic I have ever read. The artwork is incredible, with sharp lines and detailed environments throughout. The characters act as they should, even when they surprise you. The dialect is dense and forces you to read for accent, which never really feels like a hassle. And goodness is the humor rich...Kelly works multiple gags in nearly every strip; sometimes they will meet in the middle, while sometimes one element of the strip moves along a larger story while another provides the daily laugh to the side. Throughout the two years in the collection, stories gradually grow longer, with multiple plot-lines and a heap of character groupings. Some bits of humor are dated, but they usually carry universal themes. Kelly carries along wordless sight gags, cartoonish action, back-and-forth banter, impromptu poetry, completely atrocious (in a good way) wordplay, and the best character humor I've found in a comic so far.
The comic does carry a few elements that aren't quite as accepted in today's comics. There will frequently be characters smoking cigars, and the slapstick violence sometimes contains weapons. If you are worried about these things for yourself or whoever you might recommend the book, I'd read through beforehand and make sure it meets your standards.
This is a great, great collection and I am setting aside money already for whenever the next one appears.
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So much for my plan to read through Walt Kel
I was eager to compare this recently published first volume of the complete collected Pogo strips with the original Pogo collection published in 1951. I wanted to know if anything was left out of the older publication, and I got my answer: lots. Mostly smaller little episodes, within larger narratives, for example when Pogo and the gang decide to run a newspaper, we get this little interlude with two birds, which didn't appear in the original book:
So much for my plan to read through Walt Kelly's oeuvre via my family's collection of vintage paperbacks. I'll have to read through these collections as they are published, which hopefully they will continue to be, although I feel uneasy on that score. This first one is oversize and heavy, reproduces the Sunday strips in color, and was probably hugely expensive to print. It only covers the first two years. I can only hope the small publisher that produced it will have the stamina (and funds) to persevere.
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All praise as well for the manner of presentation and the hard work that went into gathering this material for publication. Not only the dailies but the full-color Sunday pages are here, reproduced in all their slightly blotchy glory from the four-color newsprint, and the few weeks of Pogo in the New York Star, 1948-1949, which served as partly as a rough draft for the syndicated version, are appended in the back of the book.
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It was definitely worth picking up. Pogo creator Walt Kelly is a master cartoonist; he packs just the amount of lively detail in his Disney-influenced characters. Action and facial expressions are both in his wheelhouse. The humor is good too, with lots of silly wordplay and backwoods
Pogo as a newspaper strip was before my time, but I remember Bill Watterson giving it high praise in some of his "Calvin and Hobbes" anthologies, and I was excited to be able to finally sample it in collected form.It was definitely worth picking up. Pogo creator Walt Kelly is a master cartoonist; he packs just the amount of lively detail in his Disney-influenced characters. Action and facial expressions are both in his wheelhouse. The humor is good too, with lots of silly wordplay and backwoods country stabs at sophistication.
This is dense read. Kelly likes to have his characters talk, and he fills the panels. The dialogue is generally good, capturing a range of satisfying voices. But it's not always easy to parse, as he relies heavily on puns and homonyms, meaning many strips require a bit of mental translation.
The characters make the comic, and I imagine each reader gravitates toward their favorites. Mine were Albert the alligator, a happy, hungry, absent-minded hedonist, and Porky-pine, the resident crank with a heart of gold. Having those two bounce off each other is generally cause for a smile.
Other characters don't work as well. Pogo the opossum is a bit of a good-natured blank working to anchor the reader. I enjoyed the various con artists and flim-flam men who came passing through: Seminole Sam, Wiley Catt, Hawgshaw and Cully. Howland Owl and turtle Chuchy la Femme didn't work as well for me as the local dolts stirring up trouble, but there are plenty of characters that did.
The book isn't perfect. The wordplay can wear you out; I preferred the plot-oriented strips over weeks that just offered several days of punny gags. The mood can get pretty familiar as well, notably the back-water ignorance that characterizes the isolated swamp. Sometimes you just want the characters to be able to actually read a newspaper they're waving around. It's also problematic, at times, to wonder who exactly Kelly's simple-minded animals are standing in for.
Still, it's a fun read, although I'm not sure I'd recommend it to those who aren't already into classic comics. For those who are, this is good stuff.
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Since the comic strip (or at least the ones in this
My dad was a huge fan of "Pogo". During the holidays, he would always be singing a Pogo-ized carol, like "Deck us all with Tom and Charlie...". Pogo was before my time, so I had never read it. I have been on a comic-strip tear for a while now, reading treasuries of "Pearls Before Swine", "FoxTrot" and most recently "Krazy Kat". When I saw that Fantagraphics was putting out compilations of "Pogo," I thought I'd try it. And I enjoyed this volume.Since the comic strip (or at least the ones in this volume) were from 1949 and 1950, I didn't get all of the references (I will admit, though, that I got a lot more than I thought I would). Fortunately, there is a section in the back that explains them.
I've already got volume 2, and I'm sure I'll be reading it at some point.
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The whole strip is entertaining! I like the imperfect, hand-drawn panels and the word balloons that bleed across panels. I wish there were more wordless strips. The puns are always terrible and great. Pup dog is my second-favorite character because while the
The swampdweller dialect charms my pants off. I love reading it. My favorite character is Porkypine. The sagas never have a grim ending which is not what I expect so the story constantly surprises me. The bold illustration attracts your eyes.The whole strip is entertaining! I like the imperfect, hand-drawn panels and the word balloons that bleed across panels. I wish there were more wordless strips. The puns are always terrible and great. Pup dog is my second-favorite character because while the others are talking he is usually doing something else and you can miss that.
Kelly inserts smart references and excels in lyric-mashing.
...more Ultimately, though, I never really took to the humor enough. The stories are all long-running and generally defy any attem
I bought this because I love Calvin & Hobbes, and Bill Watterson often cited Pogo as an influence. I can see it! I can see it in the drawing style - simple lines and characters, although Pogo gets much more dense in a typical panel that C&H does. I can read it in the some of the wordplay and the playfulness of the storytelling. From that perspective, this was good to look at.Ultimately, though, I never really took to the humor enough. The stories are all long-running and generally defy any attempts to just skip around and sample, because you're always coming in in the middle of a long, multi-day setup. It didn't click.
Glad I tried it, not sad to let it go.
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Fantagraphics' first volume of the complete Pogo is finally here! It's gorgeous. (And unless my memory is fooling me - which it could be - I'm pretty sure I was still at Century when I first preordered it, which means I actually ordered it at least 5 and a half years ago. Amazon usually cancels preorders when something is indefinitely delayed. Why they kept this order alive for over 4-1/2 years I don't know, but I saved some extra money - it was cheaper when I ordered it so I got it for less than half the final price!
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This book is a compilation of the Walt Kelly POGO comic strip from 1949 and 1950. If you remember POGO then you already love him and Churchy and Albert and Beauregard and (my favorite, the lovely Mam'selle Hepzibah (introduced 10/1950) and all the wonderful characters from the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken as satire, it is spot on, taken as fun they make us laugh. Walt Kelly was an original and so are his beloved characters from the Swamp. And if you've never read them, you are in for a delightful rea
This book is a compilation of the Walt Kelly POGO comic strip from 1949 and 1950. If you remember POGO then you already love him and Churchy and Albert and Beauregard and (my favorite, the lovely Mam'selle Hepzibah (introduced 10/1950) and all the wonderful characters from the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken as satire, it is spot on, taken as fun they make us laugh. Walt Kelly was an original and so are his beloved characters from the Swamp. And if you've never read them, you are in for a delightful read!
Recommended by Suzi
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I had to space out reading this. A lot of the plots are very repetitious and Albert's greed gets tiresome.
I do like that there's often more than one thing going on at once, with small characters having their own discussion or interaction completely oblivious to the main storyline.
I can't wait for more to be published.
I've always loved Pogo. They're now publishing all of them in book form. This volume covers the first 2 years.I had to space out reading this. A lot of the plots are very repetitious and Albert's greed gets tiresome.
I do like that there's often more than one thing going on at once, with small characters having their own discussion or interaction completely oblivious to the main storyline.
I can't wait for more to be published.
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--Porky Pine, June 19-24, 1950"
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