Pogo (comic strip)

File:PogoPossum.jpg

Pogo was the title of a long-running daily comic strip created by Walt Kelly, as well as the name of its principal character. Pogo, set in the Georgia section of the Okefenokee Swamp, often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of the strip's funny animals. The strip also used much slapstick physical humor; the same series of strips could often be enjoyed by young children and by savvy adults on different levels. Kelly received the Reuben Award in 1951 for the strip.

History

The characters of Pogo and Albert were created by Kelly in 1943, for issue #1 of Animal Comics, in a story called "Albert Takes The Cake." Both were created as comic foils for a young black boy named Bumbazine, who also lived in the Swamp. Kelly found it hard to write for the human boy, preferring to use the animals to their full comic potential, and eventually phased Bumbazine out. Pogo quickly took center stage, assuming the straight man role that Bumbazine had occupied.

In 1948, Kelly was hired to draw political cartoons for the short-lived New York Star newspaper, and decided to do a daily comic strip featuring the characters he had created for Animal Comics. Pogo debuted on October 4 of that year, and ran continuously until the paper folded on January 28, 1949. On May 16 of the same year, the strip was picked up for national distribution by Post-Hall Syndicate, and ran continuously until Kelly's death from diabetes in 1973. Kelly's wife, Selby, and assistant, Don Morgan, continued the strip to fulfill contractual obligations, before retiring it in 1975. The Los Angeles Times revived the strip under the title Walt Kelly's Pogo in 1989, written at first by Larry Doyle and Neil Sternecky, then by Kelly's son, Peter; but interest waned and the revived strip ran only a few years.

Formula

Instead of the usual "gag-a-day" format of most strips, a single Pogo daily strip typically had three or four puns, double entendres, and occasional in-jokes (visual as well as verbal) as well as the main gag or situation of the day.

In addition, each strip would work its way into one or more concurrently running continuing storylines, successfully melding both the humor and soap opera style strips popular at the time. A reader could pick up Pogo each day and laugh at the jokes, or could continue reading every day and pick up the full story. Often, Kelly would suddenly drop in a non-sequitur of sorts with throwaway one-shot gag strips that didn't follow the regular continuity.

These over-arching storylines were best seen when the strips were eventually collected and edited into book form by publisher Simon and Schuster. In addition, Kelly would provide new linking panels, and sometimes entirely new stories for these collections. As time went on, Kelly would produce entire books of original material, including original illustrations, verse, and short stories, to be sold alongside the reprint collections.

The inhabitants of Okefenokee often go about in flat-bottomed, slab-sided punts, usually bearing the name of one of Kelly's friends and family, or someone whom he wished to honor. Sometimes a newspaper editor was promised that his name would appear on a boat if he bought the strip.

Characters

No definitive list has ever been made of every character that appeared in Pogo over the 27 years the strip ran, but the best estimates put the total cast at over 300. Kelly would create characters as he needed them, and discarded them when they ceased to be funny, or had served their purpose. Most characters were at least nominally male, but a few female characters appeared regularly. Kelly has been quoted as saying that all the characters reflect different aspects of his personality.

Even though most characters have full names, some of them are more often referred to only by their species. For example, Howland Owl is almost always called "Owl"; Beauregard is usually called "Hound Dog"; Churchy LaFemme is sometimes called "Turtle" (or "Turkle," in Swamp-speak).

Permanent residents

Pogo Possum: an everyman (or every-opossum), is one of few major characters with the sense to avoid trouble. Though he prefers to spend his time fishing or picnicking, his kind nature often gets him reluctantly entangled in his neighbors' escapades. He is often the unwitting target of matchmaking by Miz Beaver.

Albert Alligator, enthusiastic and loyal, dimwitted and irascible, is often the comic foil for Pogo or the fall guy for Owl and Churchy. Having an alligator's voracious appetite, Albert would often eat things indiscriminately, and was accused on more than one occasion of eating another character.

Howland Owl is the swamp's self-appointed resident scientist, professor, doctor, explorer, witch doctor, and anything else he thought would generate respect for his knowledge. In his earliest appearances, he wears a pointed wizard's cap. Thinking himself the most learned man in the swamp, he once tried to open a school but had to close it due to lack of interest. Actually he was unable to tell the difference between learning, old wives' tales, and use of big words. Most of the harebrained schemes come from the mind of Owl.

Churchy LaFemme: a turtle. His name is a play on the French phrase Cherchez la femme. Though superstitious to a fault (for example, panicking when he discovers that Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday that month), Churchy is usually an active partner in Owl's schemes. Churchy may have once been a pirate, as for the longest time he wore a buccaneer's hat and was sometimes referred to as "Captain LaFemme."

Porky Pine: a porcupine, a misanthrope and cynic. Porky never smiled in the strip (except for one time when the lights were out). Pogo's best friend, equally honest and with a keen eye both for goodness and for human foibles, Porky has two weaknesses: infatuation for Miss Mam'selle, and a complete inability to tell a joke. Porky also had a doppelgänger, Uncle Baldwin, who wore a trenchcoat to hide his bald backside.

Beauregard Fontleroy Bugleboy: a dog and occasional policeman, he sees himself as a romantic figure, often narrating his own heroic deeds.

Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah: a beautiful French skunk modelled after Kelly's mistress, who would later become his second wife, Miss Mam'selle was long courted by Porky and others but rarely seemed to notice; sometimes she pined for Pogo.

Miz Beaver: washerwoman for the Swamp, and best friend to (and occasional match-maker for) Miss Mam'selle. A traditional mother, uneducated but with homespun good sense, who took nothin' from nobody.

Deacon Mushrat: the local man of the cloth, the Deacon speaks in blackletter, and his views are just as modern. He is typically seen haranguing others for their undisciplined ways, attempting to lead the Bats in some wholesome activity (which they inevitably subvert), or reluctantly entangled in the crusades of Mole and his even shadier allies; in either role he was the straight man and often wound up on the receiving end of whatever scheme he was involved in.

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (sometimes Bemildred): bats, hobos, gamblers, good-natured but totally innocent of any temptation to honesty. They admit nothing. Soon after arriving in the Swamp they are recruited by Deacon Mushrat into the Audible Boy Bird Watchers Society. Their names (a play on the song title "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered") are rarely mentioned; often even they cannot say for sure which brother is which. They tell each other apart, if at all, by the patterns of their trousers.

Grundoon: A baby groundhog (or "groun'chunk" in swamp-speak). An infant, Grundoon spoke only baby talk, which Kelly represented by strings of random consonants like "Bzfgt ktpv mnpx gpss twzkd znp." Eventually, Grundoon did learn to say two actual words: "bye" and "bye bye."

Frequent visitors

P.T. Bridgeport: a bear and flamboyant circus operator, named after P.T. Barnum, the most famous resident of Kelly's boyhood home, Bridgeport, Connecticut. His speech balloons resemble classic circus posters.

Tammananny Tiger: a political operator, named in allusion to Tammany Hall. He typically appeared in election years to offer strategic advice to the reluctant candidate, Pogo.

Molester Mole (né Mole MacCarony): a nearsighted and xenophobic grifter. Obsessed with contagion both literal and figurative, he was a prime mover in numerous campaigns against "subversion", and in his first appearances had a habit of spraying everything and everyone with disinfectant. Modeled somewhat after Senator Pat McCarran of the subversive-hunting McCarran-Walter Act.

Seminole Sam: a fox and traveling con man, he often attempts to swindle Albert and others, for example by selling bottles of the miracle fluid H₂O, and occasionally allies with darker characters such as Mole.

Satire and politics

Kelly always used Pogo to comment on the human condition, and from time to time, this drifted into politics. Pogo ran for President (or was nominated by his friends, although he never actually campaigned) in 1952, 1956, and 1960. Kelly used these fake campaigns as excuses to hit the stump himself for voter registration campaigns, with the slogan "Pogo says: If you can't vote my way, vote anyway, but VOTE!"

Simple J. Malarkey

Perhaps the most famous example of the strip's satirical edge came in 1953, when Kelly introduced a wildcat character named "Simple J. Malarkey" – a caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Comic historians noted that this move showed significant courage on Kelly's part considering the influence the politician wielded at that time, and the possibility of potentially scaring away subscribing newspapers.

When one reader from Providence, Rhode Island wrote in, threatening to never read the strip again if he saw Malarkey's face in the strip again, Kelly had Malarkey throw a bag over his head saying "no one from Providence should see me!" Kelly thought the new-look Malarkey was especially appropriate, because with the bag over his head like a hood, Malarkey resembled a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Jack Acid Society

In the early 1960's, Kelly took on the then-powerful ultra-conservative John Birch Society with a series of strips dedicated to Mole and Deacon's efforts to weed out Anti-Americanism (as they saw it) in the Swamp, which led them to form "The Jack Acid Society." ("Named after Mr. Acid?" "Well, it wasn't named before him.") The name is an obvious pun. The Jack Acids modeled themselves on the only real Americans: Indians. Everyone the Jack Acids suspected of not being a true American was put on their blacklist, until eventually everyone but Mole himself was blacklisted. One of the longest-running storylines in the strip's history, the strips were collected by themselves (with some original verse and text pieces) in the only Pogo book to not include the main character's name in the title: The Jack Acid Society Black Book, and one of only two books (the other being Pogo: Prisoner Of Love) to comprise a single storyline.

Later politics

As time went on, other popular figures found themselves caricaturized in the pages of Pogo. By the time the 1968 Presidential Campaign rolled around, it seemed the entire Swamp was populated by P.T. Bridgeport's "wind-up candidates," including representations of George Romney, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and Robert F. Kennedy. One of the cleverest may have been his portrayal of Eugene McCarthy as a white knight tied backwards on his horse, spouting poetry. Retiring President Lyndon B. Johnson was portrayed as a befuddled long-horned steer.

When the strips from this time were collected in Equal Time For Pogo, the Publisher wanted to edit out the strips including Kennedy's doppleganger, but Kelly insisted on keeping them in to pay honor to the slain candidate.

In the early 1970s, Kelly used a collection of characters called the Bulldogs to mock the secrecy and paranoia of the Nixon Administration. The Bulldogs included dopplegangers of J. Edgar Hoover, John Mitchell, and Spiro Agnew. Always referred to, but never seen, was "The Chief," who we are led to believe was Nixon himself.

When the strip was revived in 1989, Doyle and Sternecky attempted to recreate this tradition with an old moose that looked like Ronald Reagan, and a jackrabbit resembling George H. W. Bush.

Backlash and fluffy little bunnies

Kelly's use of satire and politics often drew fire from those he was criticizing, and their supporters. Due to complaints, a number of papers dropped the strip while others moved it to the editorial page.

Whenever he would start a controversial storyline, Kelly would usually offer alternate strips that papers could run instead of the political ones for a given week. Sometimes labelled "Special" or with a letter after the date to denote that these were alternate offerings, Kelly referred to these strips as "The Bunny Strips," because more often than not he would populate the alternate strips with the least offensive material he could imagine, fluffy little bunnies telling stupid jokes. Kelly would tell fans that if all they saw in "Pogo" were fluffy little bunnies, then their newspaper didn't believe they were capable of thinking for themselves, or didn't want them to think for themselves.

The bunny strips were usually not reproduced when Pogo strips were collected into book form, but Kelly did include a few samples of them in the 10th anniversary book, Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years With Pogo.

"We have met the enemy...."

Pogo strip from Earth Day, 1971.
Copyright 1971, 2005 OGPI

Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is "we have met the enemy and he is us." More than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human condition.

The quote, a rephrasing of a message sent in 1813 from US Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after The Battle of Lake Erie stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours," first appeared in a lengthier form in A Word To The Fore, the foreword of the book The Pogo Papers. Since the strips reprinted in Papers included the first appearances of Mole and Simple J. Malarkey, beginning Kelly's attacks on McCarthyism, Kelly used the foreword to defend his actions:

"Specializations and markings of individuals everywhere abound in such profusion that major idiosyncracies can be properly ascribed to the mass. Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

"Forward!"

The finalized version of the quotation appeared in a 1970 anti-pollution poster for Earth Day, and was repeated a year later in the strip reprinted here.

In 1998, OGPI ("Okefenokee, Glee, and Perloo, Incorporated," the corporation formed by the Kelly family to administer all things Pogo) dedicated a plaque in Waycross, GA commemorating the quote.

Swamp-speak

The predominant language in Pogo is referred to by many as "swamp-speak." It is, essentially, a rural, Southern U.S. English dialect with creative spelling and pronunciation. The dialect and phonetics used are very similar to those used by Mark Twain in his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Kelly had a good ear for language, and often created new words to fit his characters (note some of the Quotes, below), including an exclamation, "rowrbazzle".

Other media

Pogo quickly branched out from the comic pages into other media, although not quite to the degree of many contemporary comic strips. Some attribute the comparative paucity of material to Kelly's pickiness about the quality of merchandise attached to his characters.

Music

An LP called Songs Of The Pogo was released in 1956, collecting a number of Kelly's verses (most of which had previously appeared in Pogo books) set to music by both Kelly and orchestra leader Norman Monath.

While professional singers provided most of the vocals on the album, Kelly himself contributed lead vocals on two tracks: Go Go Pogo (for which he also composed the music), and Lines Upon A Tranquil Brow. He also contributed a spoken portion for Man's Best Friend.

Songs Of The Pogo was released on compact disc in 2004 by Reaction Records (Urbana, IL), including previously unreleased material.

Animation

Three animated cartoons were created based on Pogo.

The first, Pogo's Special Birthday Special, was produced by animator Chuck Jones in honor of the Comic Strip's twentieth anniversary in 1968. It starred June Foray as the voice of both Pogo and Miss Mam'selle. The general consensus is that the special, produced for NBC television, failed to capture the charm of the comic strip and is generally dismissed by fans.

Walt and Selby Kelly themselves wrote and animated We Have Met the Enemy, And He Is Us in 1970, largely due to Kelly's dissatisfaction with the Birthday Special. The short, with its anti-pollution message, was animated by hand, and some have blamed the strain of the project on worsening Kelly's health and hastening his death three years later. The storyboards for the cartoon formed the first half of the book of the same title.

In 1980, the motion picture I Go Pogo was released. Directed by Marc Paul Chinoy, this stop motion animation (or "Claymation") picture featured the voices of Skip Hinnant as Pogo; Ruth Buzzi as Miz Beaver and Miss Mam'sell; Stan Freberg as Albert; Arnold Stang as Churchy; Jonathan Winters as Porky, Mole, and Wiley Catt; and Vincent Price as the Deacon. While some fans have embraced the movie, others have dismissed it as (as with the Birthday Special) lacking Kelly's wit and charm.

None of the three animated versions of Pogo is currently available on home video.

Quotations

* "We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity."

* "Don't take life so serious - it ain't nohow permanent."

* Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly welly cracker 'n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly-
Gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Duck us all in bowls of barley,
Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

Collections

The 45 books published by Simon & Schuster

Pogo (1951)
I Go Pogo (1952)
Uncle Pogo So-So Stories (1953)
The Pogo Papers (1953)
The Pogo Stepmother Goose (1954)
The Incompleat Pogo (1954)
The Pogo Peek-A-Book (1955)
Potluck Pogo (1955)
The Pogo Sunday Book (1956)
The Pogo Party (1956)
Songs of the Pogo (1956)
Pogo's Sunday Punch (1957)
Positively Pogo (1957)
The Pogo Sunday Parade (1958)
G.O. Fizzickle Pogo (1958)
Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo (1959)
The Pogo Sunday Brunch (1959)
Pogo Extra Election Special (1960)
Beau Pogo (1960)
Gone Pogo (1961)
Pogo à la Sundae (1961)
Instant Pogo (1962)
The Jack Acid Society Black Book (1962)
The Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog (1963)
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie (1963)
The Return of Pogo (1965)
The Pogo Poop Book (1966)
Prehysterical Pogo (In Pandemonia) (1967)
Equal Time for Pogo (1968)
Pogo: Prisoner of Love (1969)
Impollutable Pogo (1970)
Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us (1972)
Pogo Revisited (1974), a compilation of Instant Pogo, The Jack Acid Society Black Book and The Pogo Poop Book
Pogo Re-Runs (1974), a compilation of Pogo, The Pogo Party and Pogo Extra Election Special
Pogo Romances Recaptured (1975), a compilation of Pogo: Prisoner of Love and The Incompleat Pogo
Pogo's Bats and the Belles Free (1976)
Pogo's Body Politic (1976)
A Pogo Panorama (1977), a compilation of The Pogo Stepmother Goose, The Pogo Peek-A-Book and Uncle Pogo So-So Stories
Pogo's Double Sundae (1978), a compilation of The Pogo Sunday Parade and The Pogo Sunday Brunch
Pogo's Will Be That Was (1979), a compilation of G.O. Fizzickle Pogo and Positively Pogo
The Best of Pogo (1982)
Pogo Even Better (1984)
Outrageously Pogo (1985)
Pluperfect Pogo (1987)
Phi Beta Pogo (1989)

Books released by other publishers

Pogo For President: Selections from I Go Pogo (Crest Books, 1964)
The Pogo Candidature (Sheed, Andrews & McMeel, 1976)
Pogofiles for Pogophiles (Spring Hollow Books, 1992)
Complete Pogo Comics: Pogo & Albert, volumes 1-4 (Eclipse Comics, 19xx) [reprints of pre-strip comic book stories, unfinished)
Pogo, volumes 1-11 (Fantagraphics Books, 1994-2000)
Pogopedia (Spring Hollow Books, 2001)

Dell Publishing Company comic books featuring Pogo

Animal Comics, issues 17, 23, 24, 25 (1947)
Pogo Possum, issues 1-16 (1949-1954)
Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, Dell Four Color issues 105 and 148 (1945-1946)
Pogo Parade (1953)

Awards

The creator and series have received a great deal of recognition over the years. Walt Kelly received the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for 1951 for the strip. The Fantagraphics Pogo collections were a top votegetter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Reprint Graphic Album for 1998.

Works influenced by Pogo

Walt Kelly's work has influenced a number of prominent comic artists.

In the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, cartoonist Bill Watterson listed Pogo as one of the three greatest influences on his own acclaimed strip, Calvin and Hobbes. (The two other strips were Peanuts and Krazy Kat. In a perfect example of 'great minds think alike', Pogo itself referenced Krazy Kat in many ways during its run, including a series of strips devoted to examining that immortal symbol of the earlier strip: the brick.)

Pogo has also been cited as an influence by Jeff MacNelly (Shoe), Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Bill Holbrook (Kevin and Kell), and Mark O'Hare (Citizen Dog), among others.

Alan Moore, most notable for writing the graphic novel Watchmen, made the January 1985 issue of Saga of the Swamp Thing (titled "Pog") a tribute to Pogo.

Jeff Smith has acknowledged that the artwork and writing style of his Bone comic book series were strongly influenced by Walt Kelly's style. Smith and Peter Kelly contributed artwork of the cast of Bone shaking hands with Pogo and Albert for the 1998 "Pogofest" celebration.

Jim Henson acknowledged Kelly as a major influence on his sense of humor, and based some of his early Muppet designs on Kelly drawings. One episode of The Muppet Show's first season included a performance of "Don't Sugar Me" from Songs Of The Pogo.

Wally Wood, a longtime illustrator for MAD Magazine, parodied Kelly's characters on several occasions, most notably in a 1955 offering entitled "Gopo Gossum".

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode The Year of Hell, the "Pogo Paradox" is a paradox in temporal mechanics in which one goes back in time with the purpose of preventing a specific event, only to end up as the reason that event occurred in the first place. It was referred to as the Pogo Paradox because of Pogo's famous quote, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson refers to his religious neighbor Ned Flanders as "Churchy LaFemme."

Dennis the Menace and his father were once seen in a rowboat named S.S. Walt Kelly. [1]

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