Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder

Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue WonderPogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading The Complete Calvin and Hobbes and Bone in recent years, I decided to give Walt Kelly's Pogo a shot after seeing Bill Watterson and Jeff Smith mention him as a prominent influence. Right out of the gate, I saw what they were talking about. I can see Calvin and the smaller Bone cousins in Pogo and both Hobbes and Smiley Bone have Albert the Alligator in their ancestry.

Kelly's art is far more detailed than a funny animal strip needed to be and the storylines are much more involved and flow from one to the next like so much swamp water. The stories have surprisingly dark moments too, like like Albert drinking the tadpole Pogo was babysitting and Albert going on trial for possibly eating a puppy.

Kelly spared no expense in coming up with characters. Pogo, Albert the Alligator, the Rackety-Coons, Howlan Owl, and Porky Pine just scratch the surface. The strip is written in an exaggerated southern dialect, which is a double edged sword. It gives Pogo's Okefenokee Swamp a sense of place but it also makes for some slower reading at times. Of course, Kelly probably didn't intend for the strip to be consumed the way I did, in huge eyefuls at a time.

While I can see why the strip was so influential, it hadn't hit its prime yet as of this volume. The stories are fairly pedestrian, lacking a lot of the political satire that is coming down the pipe in future volumes. I've got the second volume and plan to read it soon but I'm going to knock out some other things first.

Through the Wild Blue Wonder is an enjoyable look at one of the most influential newspaper strips in its embryonic form. Four out of five swallowed tadpoles.

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