Walt Kelly's Pogo: The Complete Dell Comics Volume 1

Walt Kelly's Pogo: The Complete Dell Comics #1

by Walt Kelly, Daniel Herman (Editor)

Walt Kelly's Pogo, acknowledged as one of the most important and influential comic strips of all time, first appeared not in newspapers but as a feature in the Dell comic book anthology Animal Comics, in its first issue, in 1942. The complex, multi-layered, character rich world of Pogo and the Okefenokee Swamp started in these early stories. Now, fans of Pogo can experience it all from the beginning with Hermes Press' reprint of the complete Dell Comics Pogo. Volume 1 features all of the Animal Comics Pogo stories together with complete reprints of Pogo's appearances in Dell's Four Color comics. With Hermes Press' complete reprint of the Dell Comics Pogo, admirers of this ground-breaking comic feature can now witness the strip's evolution, in an archival hardcover, digitally reconstructed to perfection.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2014

About the author

American animator and cartoonist best known for the classic funny animal comic strip, Pogo. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1951 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their Silver T-Square Award in 1972, given to persons having "demonstrated outstanding dedication or service to the Society or the profession."

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to Pogo in my youth by my father, who has a handful of the original paperback books. It is absolutely delightful to be able to read these again, and to experience some of the stories for the first time. I look forward to each new re-issue, even if it means enduring the frustration of waiting for over a year between announcement and actual publication. That complaint applies to the "Complete Syndicated" series*, rather than this Dell set; in either case, however, well worth the wait.




*I just discovered this lateness was due to the sudden short illness and death of one of the editors of that series.

[Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read Alan Moore's second volume of his collected run on Swamp Thing, I have to admit that Pogo and essentially the work of Walt Kelly was a gap in my knowledge of comics. Of course, Moore's tribute to Pogo called "Pog" intrigued me and lead me to checking out the first two volumes of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips. Given that once Pogo became a daily it became an outlet for Kelly's politics as well as for some of Kelly's innovations with the form (I immediately think of the fact that Deacon Mushrat, who doesn't appear in the Animal Comics issues contained in this collection, having his own font for his dialogue), this collection is interesting in seeing Kelly trying to get his footing with a nascent version of Pogo, who wasn't even the original focus of the feature in Animal Comics.

In the introduction to this volume, it is revealed that Kelly's original source of inspiration for Pogo was the Uncle Remus tales which has been compiled by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881. Since Animal Comics was an anthology series aimed at children, some of the things that made Pogo so powerful in it's daily form are not seen here, particularly Kelly's politics. While we know that Kelly considered himself a liberal, there are issues here with some of his portrayals of African-Americans, especially any that weren't Bumbazine, the African-American child who hung out with Pogo and acted with the possum as a foil for Albert the Alligator, who was the de facto villain of the book until Kelly removed Bumbazine and just focused on the animals of the swamp. Whether that was because having the animals interact with humans or whether Kelly was self-aware enough to understand that his portrayals of African-Americans were derogatory is unclear, but given that a later story where he has the characters break the fourth wall while an insect that identifies as "Oriental" appears and rattles off Chinese sounding words (Hong Kong, Kung Pao, etc.) I would assume it would be more of the former than the latter. (I've written about the "Ebony White Problem" in my reviews of Will Eisner's The Spirit, and I view Bumbazine as just a different implementation of this problem from one of Eisner's peers.) In addition, Kelly was a northern urbanite and was basically mimicking what he believed was southern speech patterns with his swamp denizens, since he had never actually been there. By the time Pogo became a daily, I think Kelly had a better command of his characters and the portrayals of the swamp animals is not as stereotypical as it comes off in the pages of Animal Comics. I realize it is easy for contemporary readers to make these statements, but knowing about Kelly's politics, I think he would view this criticism as fair.

I'm not sure after reading this volume if I would have enjoyed it more had I never read any of the syndicated strips. I'm going to assume that this volume was actually made more enjoyable by seeing where Kelly went with Pogo when it went into daily syndication. With The Complete Dell Comics you can see Kelly trying to figure out these characters, seeing what works and what doesn't. When he went into syndication he was able to pivot and direct the content of his comics to a more mature audience. However, you can see things in this volume that eventually were recycled by Kelly in the daily strip, but recycled in a way where you can tell that everything that Kelly did on the newspaper page was efficient and calculated. His stint with Dell allowed him to be a little less precise and it is interesting to see the evolution before our very eyes.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One could call this The Prototypical Pogo, as it reprints sequentially his first appearances, along with those of many of his swampy compatriots. It's no surprise that the Pogo comic strip as great right out of the gate, given that Kelly spent a long time working out the kinks and the conventions in these comicbook adventures. Some storylines are recognizable as the bases for ones later reworked in the strip. Other elements (such as Pogo's human friend Bumbazine) vanish completely, even before this volume is over. Even the cod Southern argot in which the characters famously speak is in development here--early on, indeed, they speak standard English. The visual evolution is intriguing to track as well, notably for Pogo himself. Early on, Albert is more of a nemesis than a scamp, though even then he is more amusing than threatening. Interestingly, in fact, early on, Albert seems to be given more of a protagonist status than Pogo is given. For the most part, these stories are whimsical and light, often simply celebrating little moments. There is little to nothing in the way of the strip's signature political satire. Consequently, these stories do not possess the complexity or underlying seriousness of purpose that eventually developed in the strip--they're just skillfully rendered, fun comics, essential reading for any Pogo fan and almost certainly fun for any comics fan, especially those who are young at heart, at least, if not actually young.

[Ty Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read a Walt Kelly Pogo story is a sure-fire way to feel young again.