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Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips #3
Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 3: Evidence to the Contrary
It's in this volume (featuring another two years worth of Pogo strips) that we meet one of Walt Kelly's boldest political caricatures. Folks across America had little trouble equating the insidious wildcat Simple J. Malarkey with the ascendant anti-Communist senator, Joseph McCarthy. The subject was sensitive enough that by the following year a Providence, Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop the strip if Malarkey's face were to appear in it again. Kelly's response? He had Malarkey appear again but put a bag over the character's head for his next appearance. Ergo, his face did not appear. (Typical of Kelly's layers of verbal wit, the character Malarkey was hiding from was a Rhode Island Red hen, referencing both the source of his need to conceal Malarkey and the underlying political controversy.) The entirety of these sequences can be found in this book. But the Malarkey storyline is only a tiny portion of those rich, eventful two years, which include such classic sequences as con-man Seminole Sam's attempts to corner the market on water (which Porkypine's Uncle Baldwin tries to one-up by cornering the market on dirt); a return engagement of Pup Dog and Houndog's blank-eyed Little Orphan Annie parody Li'l Arf and Nonny; Churchy La Femme going in drag to deliver a love poem he wrote, Cyrano style, on Deacon Mush-rat's behalf to Sis Boombah (the aforementioned hen); P.T. Bridgeport's return to the swamp in search of new talent; and of course two rousing choruses of Deck Us All With Boston Charlie.
369 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 20, 2013
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About the author
Walt Kelly
394 books53 followersAmerican 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."
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 23, 2024
It’s enough to drive a man to think!Pogo is more a slice of post-World War II U.S. cultural and political history, or to use the more precise German term, Zeitgeschichte. This collection stands out for the introduction of the character Simple J. Malarky, a wildcat modeled on Joe McCarthy in his malignant prime. There’s no mistaking the similarity between their faces, right down to the constant five o’clock shadow. R.C. Harvey’s concluding essay points out how Edward J. Murrow’s historic broadcast that took on McCarthy but notes, “Still, before Murrow, there was Walt Kelly.” As McCarthy’s biographer Larry Tye wrote in Demagogue
Albert Alligator
The most trenchant mocker was cartoonist Walt Kelly, whose Pogo strip in 1953 introduced a deranged wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey, modeled after the fire-breathing lawmaker from Wisconsin. More people learned about McCarthy from Pogo than from editorials, with the strip appearing in almost five hundred newspapers and Kelly’s books selling 30 million copies….“I got some of my funniest lines right out of his speeches as reported in the Congressional Record,” said Kelly. As for his decision to wade into politics, Kelly explained, “It is my obligation not only to remind us how youthful and brainless we are, but also within the same framework to hold out hope for the future.”Even McCarthy was hooked on how he was being portrayed:
Joe [McCarthy] sent Roy [Cohn] out every day for a copy of the Washington Post—not to read it’s harsh coverage but to see what Pogo’s Simple J. Malarkey was up to.It is difficult to imagine a comic strip having such an impact today. But it wasn’t just McCarthy that Kelly targeted. Harvey notes how “Mole MacCarony was apparently based on Patrick McCarron, a US senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954 and a leading advocate purging America of those he considered dangerous if not lethal.” He introduced legislation in 1950 that “required Communists to register with the United State Attorney General and set up an investigative body to seek out those who did not comply.” Kelly’s farcical take on the reactionary xenophobia that dominated American politics in the early 1950s fits it with today’s domestic American politics.
But there are also great comical features, as when the pelican Roogey Batoon gets credit for making the Louisiana Purchase, but what he really made was the Louisiana perches, a bucket of fish. Or the swamp characters trying to get the chicken Miss Sis Boom Bah married off to the deacon, one of Simple J. Malarkey’s cohorts. A fun, insightful collection worth the time of anyone interested in that era.
December 28, 2015
This gets five stars just for the daring and effective satire of McCarthy as J. Simple Malarkey. It's actually only a few short weeks worth of continuity, but it took the piss out of that colossal douche bag long before it happened in real life, and it does so hilariously. Otherwise, there is no shortage of Kelly's characteristic wit and brilliant, fluid drawing. A must-have for anyone serious about comics, and for anyone interested in American politics/satire.
November 12, 2014
For most people, when they refer to "Uncle Walt", they mean Walt Disney. Not me. Me? When I talk about "Uncle Walt", mean Walt Kelly. (And maybe in the spirit and vernacular of his creation, the denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp, maybe it should be "Unca Walt"?)
Last week, in a matter of hours, I read the current volume of "Complete Peanuts" (1993-1994). It took me damned near a week to read this, the current volume of "Pogo" comic strips. That's not because they were that bad. Far from it.
When you read the average "Peanuts" comic strip, you probably won't spend more than ten seconds on it. Charles M. Schulz, working within the confines of the size newspapers allowed strips, developed a very economical style. Very simple. Backgrounds were minimalistic, if there at all. All the characters, Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus, Lucy, Charlie Brown, drawn with the absolute bare minimum of pen lines. This makes for a very fast and easy read. It doesn't take long to get through the average "Peanuts" comic strip. (This does not mean that Schulz's creation lacked depth. Sparky achieved a complexity with his characters using so little. This is what makes "Peanuts" one of the all-time greatest strips.)
Unca Walt, on the other, got by with using much larger panels. He had room to work with. Many of strips had highly detailed backgrounds, lovingly penciled and inked. Very often a panel would two, three, even characters in it, each having their own word balloons, saying their lines, even if it's just Bun Rab declaring, "I carry the hose!" Everyone got a chance to say his piece. This makes reading a "Pogo" strip a more time-consuming endeavor. It takes longer to read "Pogo" than it does "Peanuts". Yet, "Pogo" is more than worth the effort. The word play, puns, the pseudo-Southern accent of Pogo the Possum, Albert the Alligator, Churchy Le Femme, Howland Owl and the rest bring a smile to the face, just as their antics do. Each strip, each panel is well crafted and lovingly rendered with plenty to study and admire.
Kelly's "Pogo", of course, was well-known for its social commentary and political satire and there's plenty of that in this volume, as Simple J. Malarky joins the cast. Malarky was a vicious and devastating caricature of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. The parody of McCarthy (and later Richard M. Nixon) was so vicious, a Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop "Pogo" if they appeared in the strip again.
In addition to the comic strips for the years 1953 and 1954, the book has a compendium of "Swamp Talk", compiled by R.C. Harvey that explains some of the terms and references found in the strips. This is an invaluable aide to the readers and Mr. Harvey should be thanked for providing this information. Of course, it does mean repeatedly flipping back to the end of the book to see what a certain term or name signified. But the information provided makes it a worthwhile effort.
This is the third volume of what is said to be a twelve book series. It was delayed over a year by the death of editor Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics. Hopefully Kim Thompson's death does not mean the end of this reprint series. And hopefully, if it continued, future volumes will not be as long in coming. And of course, it would be nice if Fantagraphics, the series' publisher, could find a way to release more than one book a year. At the rate they're going, the final volume of the series might not be published until 2024 or thereabout. I don't think I can wait that long!
Last week, in a matter of hours, I read the current volume of "Complete Peanuts" (1993-1994). It took me damned near a week to read this, the current volume of "Pogo" comic strips. That's not because they were that bad. Far from it.
When you read the average "Peanuts" comic strip, you probably won't spend more than ten seconds on it. Charles M. Schulz, working within the confines of the size newspapers allowed strips, developed a very economical style. Very simple. Backgrounds were minimalistic, if there at all. All the characters, Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus, Lucy, Charlie Brown, drawn with the absolute bare minimum of pen lines. This makes for a very fast and easy read. It doesn't take long to get through the average "Peanuts" comic strip. (This does not mean that Schulz's creation lacked depth. Sparky achieved a complexity with his characters using so little. This is what makes "Peanuts" one of the all-time greatest strips.)
Unca Walt, on the other, got by with using much larger panels. He had room to work with. Many of strips had highly detailed backgrounds, lovingly penciled and inked. Very often a panel would two, three, even characters in it, each having their own word balloons, saying their lines, even if it's just Bun Rab declaring, "I carry the hose!" Everyone got a chance to say his piece. This makes reading a "Pogo" strip a more time-consuming endeavor. It takes longer to read "Pogo" than it does "Peanuts". Yet, "Pogo" is more than worth the effort. The word play, puns, the pseudo-Southern accent of Pogo the Possum, Albert the Alligator, Churchy Le Femme, Howland Owl and the rest bring a smile to the face, just as their antics do. Each strip, each panel is well crafted and lovingly rendered with plenty to study and admire.
Kelly's "Pogo", of course, was well-known for its social commentary and political satire and there's plenty of that in this volume, as Simple J. Malarky joins the cast. Malarky was a vicious and devastating caricature of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. The parody of McCarthy (and later Richard M. Nixon) was so vicious, a Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop "Pogo" if they appeared in the strip again.
In addition to the comic strips for the years 1953 and 1954, the book has a compendium of "Swamp Talk", compiled by R.C. Harvey that explains some of the terms and references found in the strips. This is an invaluable aide to the readers and Mr. Harvey should be thanked for providing this information. Of course, it does mean repeatedly flipping back to the end of the book to see what a certain term or name signified. But the information provided makes it a worthwhile effort.
This is the third volume of what is said to be a twelve book series. It was delayed over a year by the death of editor Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics. Hopefully Kim Thompson's death does not mean the end of this reprint series. And hopefully, if it continued, future volumes will not be as long in coming. And of course, it would be nice if Fantagraphics, the series' publisher, could find a way to release more than one book a year. At the rate they're going, the final volume of the series might not be published until 2024 or thereabout. I don't think I can wait that long!
November 20, 2019
Walt Kelly's Pogo influenced the greats: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, etc. When you read it, you learn why his art and drawing is amazing, and his jokes are great. I've never seen a comic strip pack so many jokes into such a small space. Often one strip will have two, three, or more jokes running at the same time.
June 22, 2019
1953, when Walt Kelly brings McCarthyism into the strip.
November 9, 2019
I GO POGO!!!
Read
October 12, 2020It took me a while but this was a delight. the gags with the octopus tutor were priceless.
April 12, 2025
Silliness and Simple J. Malarkey, all wrapped up together.
January 21, 2021
The 1953 sequence attacking Sen Joseph McCarthy is one of the most important in newspaper/political cartooning. Excellent volume with great notes and accompanying essays.
July 2, 2015
Terrific! I love Pogo and have many volumes of Walt Kelly's swamp critters going through their daily madness. This ambitious project, capturing EVERY daily strip Walt created, is the most ambitious so far. I hesitate to read too quickly in case there's a delay producing the next volume. So far, three of twelve have been released, so I look forward to years of not only traveling familiar paths through the Okefenokee Swamp, but discovering new ones I missed when originally printed.
May 4, 2015
This volume, collecting strips from 1953 and 1954, marks when the comic started getting political. It satirizes Joseph McCarthy with the character of Simple J. Malarkey, a wildcat who sows chaos and distrust in the swamp. The humor is quite absurd, but probably hit pretty close to home for the people reading it back when it first ran.
March 30, 2015
These collections continue to be great. Volume 3 is the one where Kelly's political satire comes out, with a powerful series of comics that are a thinly veiled comment on McCarthyism.
May 26, 2016
History through comics-- a very interesting perspective
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews