Review of Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo

Walt Kelly, 1959, Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo, Fireside books and Simon and Schuster. I have two copies. A paperback given to me by my grandfather and step grandmother, when I was in high school, and a hardback, signed by the author, which I picked up for a dollar at a church rummage sale. I call that a bargain, the best I ever had. <br><br>

Poco was born in 1943 as a comic book character, and the comic books are only mentioned in passing here. A few more words are devoted to the 8-month lifespan of the New York Star, in which Pogo found work as a newspaper comic strip character. <br><br>

Simon and Schuster has a little icon near the front of most of their books, a fellow sowing seeds in a field from a bag he carries over his shoulder. In books about Pogo, this character is Pogo, but in this book he's in a hot air balloon, and it is not seeds, but footprints, that he is sowing. <br><br>

After a humorous autobiographical introduction, the book segues into some choice examples of strips from the early years of syndication (volumetrically, this is the most important part of the book). These cartoons are accompanied by pithy explanations where necessary. If you haven't met Pogo before, this is a good way to do it. <br><br>

The subjects range from nuclear weapons to pirates, with a generous helping of slapstick for all. Nonsense verse was always a part of the Pogo strip, especially at Christmas time, but really anytime. This book has a lot of it. Then, in 1952, politics discovered Pogo. Pogo was the ultimate candidate who  didn't want to run. This was perfectly in line with his personality, as was the attitude of his friends that of course he should run, selflessly, for them! <br><br

Even though I have read all of the original Pogo books that contributed to this 10-year odyssey, I can enjoy reading the strips again here because Walt Kelly's commentary is funny and informative. Plus, the book contains classic stories, such as who stole the tarts, a parody of Lewis Carroll featuring a parody of Joe McCarthy, and the world famous thinking contest between Albert and Beauregard. If that was not enough, there is Mother Goose, hard boiled eggs, I mean detectives, and nursery rhymes, all played by the Okefenokee thespians. <br><br>

Of course there was a lot more Pogo after 1959, and Kelly never put out another 10-year retrospective, but this one will give you a very good start.<br><br>

071526

the eye does its job<br>

bubbles fight to the surface<br>

till your eyes go in

071426

garden world<br>

weeds emerge<br>

from their ship

Review of Animal Comics 23

Animal Comics number 23, October and November 1946. Retail price 10 cents. I remember when I couldn't afford a $0.10 comic. The cover is Pogo, Churchy, a baseball game, and possibly a rat? Pogo is behaving a little uncharacteristically, but maybe not. Baseball is important.<br><br>

On the inside front cover is the first part of a story about a prairie dog, but the next page is the beginning of the Albert and Pogo comic. Howland Owl and Churchy also star in this particular comic. The dialect is quite a bit thicker than in the later syndicated strips. The plot of this comic contains gags that might be very familiar to those who have read the syndicated strips from the newspapers. <br><br>

The rest of this comic book is about various other creatures and people and to my mind is really not as entertaining.<br><br>

.

Review of The Okefenokee Star

This was a fanzine published in the late '70s. There were seven issues total. I have issues 2 through 6. A lot of the material originally published in the Star was reprinted in a series of three books (The Best of Pogo, Pogo Even Better, and Outrageously Pogo). Of course, a lot of what was in the Star was previously published Pogo comic strips. Most of the rest was ephemera and interviews with people who knew Kelly. <br><br>

Volume one number two, late summer 1977. This issue contains an interview with Ray Dirgo, circus illustrator and high school friend of Walt Kelly. An interview with George Ward, one of Kelly's assistants, is particularly interesting. The book also contains Kelly high school art, and Pogo strips that were published in the short-lived newspaper The New York Star. Many of these gags were repeated from the comic books published in the 1940s, and some were repeated again, albeit in modified form, in the syndicated strips in the '50s. The book also included a few cartoons by cartoonists Kelly admired, essays about Kelly and Pogo by various people, and the text of a speech he gave at a meeting of professional cartoonists.<br><br>

Volume one number three has a cover by Selby Kelly that closely follows Walt's distinctive style. This issue includes a write-up of a 1977 show of Pogo paraphernalia and artwork that was displayed for 2 months in the Bridgeport public library. This issue also covers the notorious police riot that took place when Kelly spoke at Harvard University in the early '50s. For this and other reasons, Pogo was selected as the mascot for the 25th reunion of Harvard's class of 1953. The book contains an autobiographical essay that Kelly wrote in about 1954, interviews with friends of his, and the remainder of the daily strips from the New York Star that were not reproduced in the first two issues of The Okefenokee Star. The story ended abruptly, because so did the New York Star. To my mind, the best thing in this issue is a long essay written by John Horn, a close friend of Kelly's. There are also some of Kelly's political cartoons from the New York Star, a literary critique of Pogo translated from the French, because it was written by a Frenchman, and quite a bit more. <br><br>

Volume one number four (October 1979) includes some pre-Pogo Kelly artwork, an advertisement the syndicate sent to newspaper editors to convince them to carry the strip, accompanied by some of the funniest early sequences of daily strips (reproduced here), and much more. This includes a humorous two-page biography of Kelly, and some political cartoons that he drew in 1948 for The New York Star. He used several different illustrating techniques, which are discussed in the accompanying text. There is an essay essentially saying that Walt Kelly was the godfather of underground comics, just like Lou Reed was the godfather of punk music. And then there is an article about the MAD magazine parodies of Pogo. Which are hilarious. And that's just the beginning. Wally Wood, to whom Kelly tipped his hat in one of his books, Election Extra, or Jes Fine Says Bug, was an acquaintance who did work on multiple parodies of Pogo.<br><br>

Volume one number five, January 1980, Walt Kelly's Pogo coloring book. The first part of the book is an explanation for children of the swamp and its denizens. Next, a story to be colored, which is drawn large. One panel per page. After this, a story drawn at a more ordinary size of one Sunday comic per page, also ready to be colored. The first story is just like the Pogo comic strip, although I don't remember seeing this particular one anywhere before. The second one is familiar to me. And there is plenty more, all for small children. <br><br>

Volume one number six, summer 1980. This issue returns to the format of the first four. This issue contains a passel of political campaign memorabilia. Letters, photographs, newspaper articles, reprints of early Pogo political strips, as well as the famous alternative bunny rabbit strips, and more. Walt Kelly on a radio show with Eleanor Roosevelt?! Yes, and also some Sunday baseball strips from 1970 that were never incorporated in a book.<br><br>

071126

Request That You Reconsider<br><br>

I haven't asked for much,<br>

we've hardly spoken lately,<br>

and that's my fault, I guess,<br>

tho you have my number,<br>

but this does seem a bit much,<br>

all the wars this world has seen,<br>

and more coming every day,<br>

nuclear clock counting down,<br>

world hot as you know what,<br>

shootings on the Tik-Tok,<br>

or whatever.<br><br>

Couldn't you have sent the Rapture,<br>

saved a few sinners,<br>

before the Four Horsemen<br>

(a bit sexist now I think of it)<br>

cut loose?

071026

Non-Poultry In Motion<br><br>

Apatosaurus<br>

I'm in love with your<br>

stupendous throat<br><br>

don't pity T. rex<br>

for its stunted two-clawed arms<br>

foreplay<br><br>

Stegosaurus<br>

I could've been a dragon<br>

hear me chirp