The Pogo Party

by Walt Kelly

Genres: Humor, Comics, Comic Strips, Comix

Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

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

[Al McCarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

1956 first printing.
The Bats brothers. P.T. Bridgeport. The Tammany Tiger, who throws me off, for being one of the few characters with no accent or affectation. Porky Pine and Pogo, Miss Mam'zelle Hepzibah and Mix Beaver. Churchy and Howland. Deacon Mushrat. Bun RAb.
It takes a while to get to the politics. Seminole Sam steps in. Beauregard butts in. And then those two from Newslife magazine.
I never stop being blown away by this gorgeous cartooning and brilliant wordplay.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political commentary in a very general sense, as well as social commentary. This didn't contain any of the classic Pogo that I remember but it was a fun read nonetheless. Took me too long to read it partly due to distractions and partly due to reading before sleep (a different kind of distraction).

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this is the sixth Pogo collection. It covers strips from 1955 and 1956 and it is as charming and intelligently silly as the previous collections. The familiar swamp characters are all here: Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy LaFemme, Miz Beaver, the three bats (Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildered) that can’t tell each other apart, Howland Owl, Porky Pine, Miz Hepzibah, Deacon Mushrat, Tammananny Tiger and others. Also here is Kelly’s evocative, witty ink drawings, its trademark lettering, and the zany, pun-filled dialogue. A blackbird returns to her nest to discover her egg has hatched (well actually its one of the bats who crash-landed into the egg) and tries to rear the bat but reaches a point of frustration as we all do as parents. At the end of her tethers, she says, “If you don’t stop bein’ sharper than a serpent’s tooth you ain’t gonna be a spankless child.”

Albert and Pogo are making a list of qualities for Howland Owl but struggling to find anything good. Pogo offers that he has “a perty brown eye” for one. Then, after a pause, since he has more than one eye the second eye becomes quality number two. Again they struggle. “Well, he allus got a ready answer. Wrong but ready,” says Pogo. Albert agrees, “Oh, he got an answer fer everythin’…cept questions.” Kelly also had a gift for narrative so the strips are not one off gags but parts of extended narratives that are worldly wise and filled with incisive satire on the human condition—ambition, friendship, greed, vanity, romance, parenting. If you were born long after Kelly retired and know nothing of his work, please visit Alibris or Powell or any other well-stocked used book purveyor and get yourself some Pogo. It’s as worthy as pretty much anything else great that came out of the 1950s, from Miles Davis to Chuck Berry, and better than much other fare (The Wonderful World of Disney, Beat literature, and Charleston Heston movies, to name a few).