Review of Pogo's Body Politic

Walt Kelly, 1976, Pogo's Body Politic, Fireside Books and Simon & Schuster. <br><br>

One thing Kelly was known for, as has been remarked on by others, was his lush scenery. The backgrounds of the Pogo strip have probably never been equaled. The weird twisted trees, the birds, and everything about the swamp was simply beautiful.<br><br>

This book begins with Spiro Agnew, looking a lot like a hyena, conversing with a flea. He is reminiscing about his former greatness, such as it was. Bitten a few times by his new acquaintance he is then introduced to a spider. This is a shady fellow who bears a passing resemblance to Nixon, or a teapot. Read on, and the panels about Agnew and J. Edgar Hoover are interleavewd with those containing only the regular swamp characters, as well as some featuring a pig who shows up only every 20 years. But they all make the same point: if things have changed, it has not been for the better. Mostly we are speaking of politics, but really just any aspect of human existence.<br><br>

Moving on, we have secrets that are so secret they are super secrets, jobs that don't involve work, and businesses that don't involve work either. Success is assured! At least if everybody can evade the depredations of the insects.<br><br>

At this point it was time for the 1976 election and people started bustling around pushing candidates, and plotting what to do after the election took place. Women's liberation reared its head, although not by that name, and I have to say that Kelly's attitude towards equal rights was pretty old-fashioned.<br><br>

Sadly, as with my copy of Pogo's Bats and the Belles Free, this book is falling apart. The same is not true about the much larger reprints, that were published about the same time, and by the same publisher. I don't know what happened.<br><br>

Yryreéttettwer