Review of Pogo volume 1

Walt Kelly, July 1992, volume 1, Fantagraphics. Back in the 1990s the comics publisher Fantagraphics decided to reprint all of the daily syndicated Pogo newspaper strips. This did not include the Sunday strips, which were published in color. 11 books were published. Each book encompassed a little bit less than half a year, and since Walt Kelly wrote and drew Pogo from 1948 to 1973, they didn't get very far. These books are large format paperbacks. About 10 years ago Fantagraphics tried again, but this time they are including the Sunday color strips and the books are hardbacks. They plan to publish 12, covering the whole run of Pogo by Walt Kelly, and so far eight of them have already been published. Number nine is supposed to come out sometime next year. Pogo continued into the 1990s, written and illustrated by half a dozen people who were not Walt Kelly and, alas, were not geniuses. They did a pretty decent job, but nowhere near as good as the original. I am pretty sure that Fantagraphics is not planning to reprint these. Many of them were reprinted in the fanzine published by the Pogo Fan Club, entitled The Fort Mudge Most, which was published during the 1980s and 90s (copies of some issues are available used). The Fantagraphics books also don't include the many Pogo books that were not based on the newspaper strips. Some of these were reprinted in the 1970s.<br><br> 

This book begins with the strips that were published in the New York Star, beginning with October 4th 1948 and ending with January 28th 1949. These are followed by the first syndicated strips, beginning with May 16th 1949 and ending with June 25th of the same year. These included reworked versions of some of the gags used in the Star. Breaking the fourth wall was a type of gag that Kelly used frequently. He began in the New York star in 1948, with, for example, word balloons projecting from one panel to another, hats and heads projecting out of panels, and a bird flying from the space between panels into one of the panels. Also, Pogo refers to himself as a comic strip character. The first examples might not be truly breaking the fourth wall, but the last certainly is. <br><br>

In these early strips, Kelly stuck strictly to Vaudeville and slapstick. He realized a couple of years later that the human condition was the only source of comedy he needed, and he really got into political satire leading up to the 1952 presidential election. Those strips appear in the next 10 volumes in this series. There is a lot more beyond that of course, both in the new series, and in the original books published by Kelly at the rate of one or two a year. Most of those are still available at reasonable prices for used books.<br><br>