Rating: 
Summary: Review!
Review: "Fans of classic comic strips will enjoy POGO, VOLUME 1, the first installmen in a reprint of Kelly's complete work. Kelly had an unmatched ability to blend superb draftsmanship with absurd humor, sophisticated wordplay and political satire." (LOS ANGELES TIMES
Rating: 
Summary: Too short!
Review: I was born after Pogo stopped running, apparently, but this has to be one of the best comic strips I've ever seen. Kelly has an attention to detail that puts "Calvin and Hobbes" to shame. Granted, comic strips in those days were bigger than now.On one hand, I liked seeing the difference between the syndicated strip and the originals, I also felt like I got ripped off a little since 1/3rd of the book was repeated. The intro was enough to make up for it. For those of us that didn't know much about Kelly and his times it was nice to have some additional information. Great book, I love Pogo!
Rating: 
Summary: You call this a children's book?
Review: OK, I guess I started reading Pogo when I was a child, way back when it was still being written by Walt Kelly. But I find it most amusing that you have catagorized this book as ages 9-12. Here I am pushing 55 and still finding it very entertaining. I didn't understand who his characters were until I was old enough to recognize our politicians in his comic strip. I got better at that after I was 12.
Rating:
Summary: The mere beginnings of one of the comic strip greats...
Review: Reading George Herriman's "Krazy Kat" can evoke the response "this is from the first half of the twentieth century?!?!" In like manner, reading Walt Kelly's "Pogo" evokes the response "this is from the 1940s!!?!?!" The reality hits home when various animals (Albert the alligator, Pogo Possum, and Chug Chug Curtis the traveling duck) discuss the Dewey/Truman election of 1948 around page 15. Then Kelly's achievment really hits home: even early "Pogo" hasn't really dated itself for almost sixty years. The jokes (and even most of the puns) still smell fresh. The characters couldn't be more intriguing and the social and political undertones (though not as prevalent in this volume) couldn't be more inspiring. It only takes a few pages to understand why "Pogo" repeatedly receives accolades such as "one of the best comic strips ever".
So many highlights appear in this volume that listing them would take bajillions of words. Some of the standouts include: Albert drinks the "Frog Child"; The campaign for sherrif; Howland Owl's School (which includes the book critic "Orville the Scrooch Owl"); Porkypine's "Don't like anybody!" (which appears twice).
The introduction includes a load of useful background information on Walt Kelly. It also explains why some strips seem like repeats in this volume. Fantagraphics dug back into "Pogo's" pre-syndicated days. The strips that appeared in the ill-fated "Star" newspaper provide interesting juxtaposition with Kelly's syndicated work. The artwork improves. Some of the jokes improve. Basically, sometime between January and May of 1949 Kelly polished "Pogo" and sold it to a syndicate. In the latter he reused and refined some of the strips that ran in the "Star". Fantagraphics prints them all.
The introduction also helps readers sort through the morass of characters that pervade "Pogo". Apparently the cast ended up numbering into the thousands (counting all the insects and animals that appeared over the years); but the strip mainly revolves around a base set of characters. The list and promise (i.e., to continue tracking the cast throughout successive volumes) on page viii will help readers sort through some of the strip's complexities.
Fantagraphics has become one of the best and most respectable publisher of classic comic strips. Not only have they continued cranking out volumes of the classic "Krazy Kat", they have taken on the Golden Fleece of comic strips, "Peanuts". The "Pogo" volumes were published throughout the 1990s and Fantagraphics made it through 11 volumes.
"Pogo" well deserves its reputation. It influenced many subsequent strips such as Berke Breathed's "Bloom County", and Jeff Smith's "Bone", to name a few. In fact, "Pogo" helped to shape comics for the latter half of the twentieth century. This volume contains the seeds for what would become one of the best comic strips ever. Start here and continue on.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: The pogo serious is very original and funny. Walt kelly was brilliant yet simple. Somethign for all ages!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: The pogo serious is very original and funny. Walt kelly was brilliant yet simple. Somethign for all ages!
Rating:
Summary: The very beginning of the world's finest comic strip!
Review: This is not the, nor The, but THE most whimsical comic strip ever invented in the whole history of the American funnies. And it also breaks another record of featuring the LARGEST and most varied cast of characters ranging from a GIGANTIC black prehistoric whale that swallows just about everything to a tiny, tiny little amoeba that Albert the Alligator accidentally swallowed at one time. In addition, this very unique strip is about the only one where you can find comedy, action-adventure, fantasy, science-fiction, romance, history, drama, poetry, songs, political satire, social comments, current affairs, literary reviews, philosophy, even mathematics to boot all crammed in one little space! NOT to mention such elegant artwork with very deft shading and details so carefully and lovingly done on each single strip, believe it or not! It all took place in a setting so geographically real it was actually featured in National Geographic a few times: our very own Okefenokee Swamp straddling the very borderline between Georgia and good ol' Florida where I used to live. Here the reowned Walt Kelly gently nestled a little pocket of make-believe fairyland in the very midst of the real-life marshland where a whole bestiary of the most colorful animal-like characters ever created would be born and tenderly nurtured into our collective hearts especially during The Golden Age of Comics and Cartoons. First, here comes the famous platter-eyed, cigar-smackin' Albert The Alligator, who is ACTUALLY the firstborn rather than our very own Pogo: he was very first featured as the greedy old villain who was after the innocent little possum and his HUMAN friend who happened to be a young black boy named Bumbazine in a children's comic book which was once the part of a whole unbelievable blizzard of illustrated magazines that usually featured Bugs Bunny, Woody The Woodpecker, and Tom & Jerry in the 1940s. Then the little black boy departed after a few issues - to be replaced by an arrogant old know-it-all, Howland The Owl with his huge spectacles and a pointy wizard's hat and the happy-go-lucky little turtle sporting a pirate's hat named Churchy La Femme who once tried to invade Pogo's humble little rowboat, yet got overthrown in the very end! Once an odd-looking, rat-like little creature, Pogo grew quite fluffier and rounder over the years into that cute little pom-pom thingie in a trademark black-and-red striped shirt that we all know and truly love. Now more or less developed, our swampland friends all moved into a New York newspaper where they performed a few funny adventures for about a year. And then that old paper folded up so, it was time for the critters to move on to a far more nationwide syndication in 1949 - the very year before Charles Schultz first began bringing up his very own troop of the world-famous Peanuts. Here our crew were joined up by Porky Pine the sourpuss porcupine with a sweet disposition and Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah the flirtatious little skunkette with a Frenchy accent who would be relentlessly chasing the cute but shy Pogo all through the rest of the strips yet to come! Throughout the years, Pogo would develop into a very sophisticated piece of work with both refined art and literature with a few elements that may be a bit too above the common readership yet won its way into many a heart nevertheless with such adorable and sympathetic characters, especially such a generous and loving old possum like Pogo with the warmest heart quietly beating behind his furry breast and that hilarious dinosaur-like creature of Albert The Alligator who can do so many tricks with his lit cigar and just loves to get into quarrels with all the other characters! In fact, Albert is the real apple of my eye for over a decade now and oh, I wish I can date him! The reason I came to know Pogo and his crew so well is because the old strip was briefly revived by a young creative team back in 1989, when I was a high-school senior. Then I fell into love with the cute little alligator in his birthday suit and thus got hooked. In fact, I am the member of Pogo Fan Club right now and still making a few contributions to its illustrated magazine. Unfortunately, the young artists of the new strip were eventually unable to keep up, so the son and daughter of the old Kelly himself took right over. Then they ran into quite similar problems, so they had to call it quits as well. So curtains had to fall in the very end - but fortunately, our very own Pogo, Albert, and all the others were at least saved from complete oblivion by being granted a very short chance to be glimpsed for a few years on the modern funnies by the current generations. But - Pogo is NOT the only one; Calvin and Hobbes, The Bloom County, The Far Side, and now The Peanuts are all now retired forever from the comic pages. And I fear that we all must realize that the other old strips still being done by the original hands will soon be gone as well: B.C., Dennis The Menace, Beetle Baily, and a certain few others as well. So as Porky Pine might have said when our innocent little Albert was finally saved from the noose: "Life is nohow permanent." But - not to fear, my dear fans of the funnies: there will be future masterpieces of strips yet to come, including mine - I hope. Right now I am working on a new strip of my own called "Dr. Stego", which is about a talking dinosaur with a philosophy of his own about the modern life that he suddenly winds up in. But - it will not be a easy path, so please wish me good luck and success with my own work, thank you very kindly. Amen.
Rating:
Summary: A must for die-hard fans
Review: This review is for all the volumes in this series of reprints being created by Fantagraphics of all of the Pogo daily strips, starting right from the beginning. (As of this 9/2001 writing, they're up to vol. 11, but they're coming out wayyyy tooooo slooowwwwwwly for my taste.) R.C. Harvey has set out to chronicle the entire Pogo ouvre, and do so in a semi-academic fashion. One of the highlights (or eminently skippable, depending on your view) of all these books is the long intro by Harvey in each volume, wherein he gives some needed historical reference points (esp. in these early-50s books), for example, the pointed humiliation Kelly gives to McCarthyism (which is scattered thru vols. 6 to 9). It is in the the 1951-to-1953 period where Kelly really finds his voice in political lampooning. (One of the nice features of the intros is an ongoing compilation of the Complete Cast of Characters in the Swamp -- by vol. 11, the count is up to 142.) That is not to say this and the others are merely political cartoons. The bulk of the action is sheer joyous nonsense, repleat with cockamamie money-making schemes, confused identities, and just plain absurd nonsense. Kelly's touch with the English language was second to none (at least on the comics page), and his lush artwork puts almost all other comics to shame. His work started to take on a political tone in 1951, and he revisited the topic whenever the politics of the age got a little too silly. (Some of his best work in this arena is for the 1968 election, captured in "Equal Time for Pogo".) As far as quality comic-strips of the 20th century goes, Kelly's Pogo has only 3 serious competitors: George Herman's "Krazy Kat", Trudeau's "Doonesbury", and the all-too-short run of "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson. (And Watterson makes it clear that his two main artistic influences were Krazy Kat and Pogo.) Now, if they could just Get On With It and publish the rest of the work (the first 11 volumes have gone from his start in 1948-1949 up to early 1954, and Kelly published until his death in 1974, so that means that they've got about another 50 volumes to go -- each one contains about 5 months of dailies), and then also do a compilation of the Sunday comics, us Pogo nuts would be all set to laugh our fool heads off well into our doddering years... btw, you can try to build your own Pogo collection by getting all the books published during Kelly's lifetime -- however, they are almost all out of print, and it would cost you a fortune...
Rating:
Summary: Alternative comics!
Review: Vol. 1 includes the legendary (pre-syndication) STAR strips, in which most of the cast is introduced
Rating: 
Summary: The start of Walt Kelly's swamp friends
Review: We see the daily growth of Kelly's sophistication and humor. Strips are a little muddy in places, but always readable. For die-hard fans, this book is essential; for those who jumped in with I Go Pogo or later stuff, you can pass. Glowing introduction to WK's life.
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