Pogo is that rarest of strips. On one hand it is a deeply complex universe where adults can see multiple meanings in what Walt Kelly wrote and drew. On the other there is a simple, fun filled world where a seven year old can laugh uncontrollably at the silly animals paddling themselves across a swamp on a flat-bottomed boat, many of whom seem to live in trees.

The influence of Walt Kelly’s work on Pogo stretches across ages and generations. What he wrote and drew, the way he could reshape the English language while conveying an insanely funny dialect while incorporating his own sense of satire, slapstick and burlesque has been acknowledged as an influence by many different creators.

There are millions who enjoy the ghost of what Walt Kelly brought to comics, art, the English language and animation and they don’t even realize it. The Muppets, Calvin and Hobbes, Asterix and Obelix, Bone, Doonesbury and Bloom County are just a few of the characters, comics and newspaper strips that would all look very different if Walt Kelly hadn’t created Pogo.

Walt Kelly was so adept at manipulating and creating inside the English Language that he may have created the greatest summation of politics in this country ever contained in a single sentence: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

For a few years now Pogo has also been relatively absent from the marketplace, making it difficult for new fans to get on board, to discover the joy found inside Okefenokee. After years of solid reprints in various volumes, the newspaper strip Pogo is finally receiving a straight chronological reprinting of every daily and Sunday that Kelly drew.

Bona Fide Balderdash, the second volume of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips from Fantagraphics recently hit the shelves of comic and book stores. Collecting newspaper strips that appeared between Jan 1, 1951 and December 28, 1952, there are over 600 dailies included inside this volume, the second in a planned twelve volume series.

If you have never visited Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, Bona Fide Balderdash is a great chance to discover the beauty of what Walt Kelly created inside Pogo. Kelly’s touch with pen, ink and brush is acknowledged to be one of the best ever seen in an American newspaper. His animals move with the weight, grace, imbalance and authority of humans. We can see a world that is almost three dimensional in a two dimensional format.

The publishing history of Pogo goes beyond the normal “syndicated newspaper strip” route. In an odd reversal of the way things normally work (a reversal which fits the essential absurdity of Pogo to a “T”), the character first appeared in comic books in late 1941. The title was Animal Comics #1 by Dell.  After some reshaping in both style and format, eight years later Pogo and the rest of the residents Okefenokee Swamp moved over to newspapers.

Kelly, who understood the difference between the needs of the newspaper reader and the book reader, also created reprint books which had slightly altered storylines or completely new pages. Dell also published sixteen issues of a Pogo comic book. But for many, the Pogo they love was the incarnation read daily in newspapers across America.

When Pogo first appeared in newspapers in 1949 Kelly was already one of most experienced artists in his field. After working in local newspapers drawing editorial and other cartoons, he moved west and became an animator for Disney Studios. As part of their desire to create the greatest animated features ever, the studio offered classes in composition and art. These classes were available to all the artists and Kelly appreciated the education that Disney offered.

While at Disney Studios he worked on various animated shorts as well as Pinocchio, Fantasia and other features. During this period he also quietly started contributing art to the brand new medium known as “comic books.”

After leaving Disney Studios Kelly began working on comic books for Dell Comics and Western Publishing, (two different companies, but united in their final product). There he drew memorable covers for Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories as well as issues of Four Color. Most famously he also drew Fairy Tales and various Christmas and Easter stories.

His art on these issues ranks among the finest ever created for a comic book. Kelly had a distinct way of engaging a child’s fantasy as if it occupied a dream world. When he worked in the real world, such as his work on Our Gang, Kelly had no problem adapting to the demands of the narrative.

It was inside an issue of Animal Comics #1 (1941) for Dell that we first meet Pogo Possum. Originally he and Albert were almost second bananas to a human character called Bumbazine. After a short while Kelly realized that the presence of humans inside the strip was limiting what he could accomplish inside the panels. Bumbazine disappeared quickly and the more familiar Okefenokee Swamp began to take a more fully developed shape.

During the war Kelly was unable to serve but he did work for the Armed Forces as an illustrator. After the end of the conflict he returned to where he had started, in newspapers. In 1948, while working for the New York Star, he decided to revisit characters he had created while at Dell, Pogo and Albert. His earliest Pogo dailies appeared only in the Star, but the paper folded within a year of their first appearance.

After a few months Pogo began national syndication in May, 1949. This is where Volume One: Through the Wild Blue Wonder in Fantagraphics’ reprint series picks up. Almost immediately Kelly begins building a large, varied and funny cast of characters. It is one of the most amazing universes ever created for a comic book or comic strip.

The essentials include Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, a turtle named Churchy LaFemme, a skunk named Miz Ma’m’selle Hepizbah, Miz Beaver and eventually, about five hundred various other animals of note. It is hard to figure out how many residents lived inside the mud and the muck of Okefenokee, they all came and went as they pleased.

By November of 1949, the first year of the strip’s national syndication, the Thanksgiving table is packed. At the head of a table sits an old turkey himself. It seems he had been leading the hunting party for a Thanksgiving turkey while maintaining a wonderful disguise. Once discovered, he joins them for dinner.

As they all chow down on catfish, Albert extols the value of catfish and ends by saying “…Besides we couldn’t eat a huntin’ pardner.” The turkey, smiling as picks up a fork replies “I figgard the safest place would be in the posse.”

Within six months Kelly was already an expert at what would be a life-long habit for him as he worked inside the world of Pogo. The minute he needed a character it not only appeared and seemed to have been there all along. This is one of the gifts that he had and a reason Pogo is so loved. Kelly had the ability to make the unfamiliar instantly familiar.

Music played an important part of what Kelly created. The language inside Pogo sings with rhythm. His ability to write in a dialect that we think we all know, but in reality is not really aligned with any specific area, is amazing.

Take the Thanksgiving excerpt from a few paragraphs ago. It is one thing to just drop a “g” from the end of a word, making hunting “huntin’” It is another to take the word figured” and make it “figgard.’ At first glance it seems to be a nonsense word but for some reason the reader instantly recognized what the turkey meant!

Bona Fide Balderdash opens with a storyline about a jazz musician who happens to be a pig. As Mr. Solid McaHogany gets ready to jam with Pogo, he lets the little Possum carry his clarinet case. It is a telling part of Pogo’s personality that he is so trusting and in awe of the musicians. This little characteristic of his is one of the reasons so many people loved him.

It is also one of the reasons why Pogo could anchor a strip with such a wide cast of characters and never disappear. He exemplifies what almost every one of us believes we are, trusting and a bit naïve. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have problems or feel manipulated by those around him, (when they try and get him to run for President in 1952 is one great example…) for we all do at times. But Pogo is how many of us see ourselves. Just a decent person trying to get by in a world filled with hucksters, the manipulative and the slightly nuts.

Looking to jam, MacHogany decides Pogo needs piano lessons so they go off to look for a piano. As they do Pogo continually refers to the instrument as a “Pie-Anna”. This is an absolute killer joke for anyone who can read. From a hillbilly to a city folk, everyone laughs at this little word.

That same daily (Jan 6, 1951) contains a paragraph from which lesser writers would have built an entire myth-based universe. Yet Kelly has so much to offer us that he can use this tale once, and just drop it inside a four panel newspaper strip. As the pig looks inside the “Pie-Anna” he begins to tell the story of how the piano and the piano-teacher arrived in Okefenokee.

“…That Pie-anna was blew in here in the bog ol’ horry-kane of nightneen ought twenny-six. It was chock full of fishes an’ sea gulls — turkles an’ a disappointed octopus name of George — he wanted to swim the English Channel that yea. Psst….Richard.”

A frog appears out of the lid and says “Don’t disturb me when I is takin’ a bath  an’ press down on the loud pedal out there — it turns on the hot water.”

One daily, a full myth, a talking frog that teaches piano, a hurricane, a disappointed octopus who wanted to swim the English Chanel… Cartoon Network has put on entire shows with less than ten percent of this inventiveness.

Across his career on Pogo Kelly’s wordplay and his feel for dialect is on the level of Mark Twain’s best work. Kelly’s work is literary in a way that so many other strips and comics never could be. Panels inside some of these dailies contain three or four jokes, each one centering on the way words can have multiple meanings.

Because what Kelly did with words could be understood nearly across the board, there are those who feel that what Kelly accomplished as a wordsmith exceeds what James Joyce did in his novels. In the modern era George Carlin is one of the few who could match Kelly’s insight into the way we speak and think as a nation.

While Kelly’s earliest work had limited political content the strip began to move into the world of satire. Mirroring Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign slogan of “I Like Ike” Kelly introduced “I Go Pogo”, a slogan so popular in its day that it led to what became known as “The Pogo Riot” during a 1952 campaign rally in Harvard. 

Senator Joseph McCarthy was making a name for himself by claiming that he knew where Communists were hiding in the government and Hollywood. Shortly after the Senator gained national prominence for his famous actions, a wildcat name “Simple J. Malarkey” showed up in Okefenokee. The character eventually drew so much of an outcry that one newspaper said they would not run Pogo if the Malarkey ever showed his face in the strip again. Kelly placed a hood over his head and went on for a few more appearances…!

The political content of Pogo accelerated as the years passed and it did cost Kelly readers. But he was still able to write for a wide and varied audience. His work ethic was legendary. He would answer fan mail individually, create a new daily, meet with a licensing agent (for he handled his accounts himself), attend a recording studio and do a book signing in the same day. Highly protective of his strip he had no compunction whatsoever in taking on his syndicate for what he perceived to be as a lack of interest on their part.

Over the years there were numerous books, toys and even records. He loved to skewer Christmas Carols. Kelly’s composition Deck the Halls With Boston Charlie (sung to the tune of “Deck the Halls with boughs of Holly”) is still sung by fans during the holidays. The strip made several appearances in animation and once inside a stop-motion special. But Kelly distanced himself from these as he felt the lack of control he had over the product did not reflect well on the series.

Kelly passed away in 1973. His wife continued the strip (using assistants) for another two years. The final strip was published on July 20, 1975. Under the guidance of two of his children Carolyn and Peter, it made a return to newspapers in 1989 only to be canceled a year later. Today Carolyn serves as an editor of the Fantagraphics series. Much of Kelly’s biographical information can be found in the introduction to the first Fantagraphics volume as well as online. 

In 1999 The Comics Journal #210 (February, 1999) listed their take on the top one hundred comics of all time.  Pogo finished third to Krazy Kat by George Herriman (#1) and Peanuts by Charles Schulz (#2). The list wasn’t limited to just newspaper strips. It also held Maus, MAD, Donald Duck (as written and drawn by Carl Barks), Raw Magazine and American Splendor (Issues #1-10). The list was one of the most inclusive approaches possible to one of the most complex questions ever asked in any field, “Which one is the best?”

There is a reason that after all these years Pogo ranks so high among the best ever offered in the medium of comics. With Pogo, Kelly created a strip that could be read by a seven year old as well as their seventy year old Grandparent. The child may have laughed uncontrollably at the funny animals who spoke an even funnier language, but inside the strip was a complex world that any adult could easily understand. Few strips, if any, were ever able to cross generational lines the way Pogo did.

In Okefenokee Swamp you never knew who was going to show up. What Senator, what congressman, what salesman, what circus or what tiny little mouse offering sly remarks might appear from nowhere. There were enough characters inside the place to populate a small town.

Few, if any strip in the history of the medium had such a large cast. Or such an amiable host. Those who lived in Okefenokee were good people with very human faults. They just happened to be possums, alligators, beavers, mice, owls, wildcats, camels and almost any other four legged creature you can think of. Like Aesop thousands of years before him, Walt Kelly knew how to show us something about ourselves while disguising the truth with laughs and animals that seemed to be mysteriously just like people we know.

— Mark Squirek