Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash by Walt Kelly

Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  While I did not read this book in it's entirety, I'm calling it done. Newspaper comics aren't written in a way to make them digestible in large swathes.
  
  Anyway, so much of what came after is influenced by what Walt Kelly did with Pogo. His cartooning is without peer, even now when he's been dead for 40+ years. I hate to admit it but I think his artwork beats out even the almighty Bill Watterson. This isn't the breezy read you think it is, though. It's all written in a Southern dialect and each panel takes a little effort to decipher.
  
  I'll dip into this from time to time in the future but for now, we are done.
• 
  Brandt

  The problem with the passage of time is the built-in bug (feature) which makes it very easy to forget things. One reason for this is as time passes, the number people who were present for those events decreases over time. With fewer first hand counts, we need to dig through artifacts of those past times and frankly that's hard so usually we will lazily accept whatever the accepted narrative of a particular time is. When I was a kid, my ideas of my mother's childhood (she was born in the 50s) were filled in by the Leave It to Beavers, Father Knows Bests and Donna Reed Shows of the world. These television shows presented a sanitized view of 1950s America, where the worst could happen would be that the Beavers of the world would steal a penny candy from the local druggist, only to be found out and given a life lesson lecture by Ward to close the show. Of course, as a grade school kid watching these reruns on the local UHF channel, I had no concept of On the Road, Naked Lunch and "Howl", the smoldering sexuality presented by the likes of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and a young Marlon Brando or the civilization shattering idea of Elvis Presley shaking his hips while singing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Instead, thanks to 50s television, I just bought the accepted notion that everyone liked Ike and dissent wasn't a thing that existed.
  
  Of course, with age comes wisdom and eventually if you dig enough you find out that the sanitized view of culture often has its own political ramifications. By the time I was watching those old 50s sitcoms in my tween years, the Beavers of the world had become the parents and they likely had their own reasons for trying to portray the world of their childhood in this way (I worked under the impression that my parents' generation had perfect lives--my parents lives and the suicide of one of my mom's friends shattered that view inexorably in my young adulthood--I wonder how I could ever have been so naive.) Unfortunately, in post-World War II America, the narrative of a country still divided by racism didn't fit with the preferred narrative of a white-bread America, defender of the free world. Sexuality would only undermine this notion of the nuclear family of a mom, a dad and 2.5 children (although since Lucy and Desi didn't share a bed, where did that baby come from anyway?) This was the age of Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code Authority, so censorship was in full swing (won't someone think of the children?) With all of this mind, if there was going to be a voice of dissent, why not put it in plain sight?
  
  Enter Pogo. By the time Walt Kelly started working on the syndicated Pogo newspaper strip in 1950, he effectively had given himself a daily soap box to espouse his personal politics and philosophy. However, in the 50s you just couldn't come out and say it, so Kelly dressed it up in cute woodland creatures of the kind that had started his career at Disney and then was deft enough to layer the strips in such a way that what looked innocuous was actually subversive as hell. Take the "I Go Pogo" arc that takes a good part of the 1952 dailies. This became popular at universities and ushered in a series of Kelly speaking at universities and as a result growing the readership of Pogo in the process. But the joke here is that "I Go Pogo" is as vacuous a campaign slogan as "I Like Ike!" which doesn't really communicate anything important about the candidate (and has been re-used ad nauseum by the likes of Jeb Bush (JEB!) and my local Cleveland favorite Dennis Kucinich (Dennis!)) Of course, this slogan (and associated campaign pins) lead to the swamp denizens trying to draft Pogo into running for President (of what, I'm not even certain the citizens of Okefenokee know) and hilarity ensues.
  As I stated in my review of the previous volume, these techniques would later be used in strips like Bloom County but unlike that strip, Kelly subtly weaves his political dissent in a strip that sometimes becomes so strange that it disarms its targets in the process.
  
  Unfortunately, in the years since Kelly's death in 1973, we (collective we here) have mostly forgotten about Pogo. Unlike Charlie Brown, Pogo never became the ubiquitous star of stage and screen, jumping from the newspaper page. Like I stated in that previous review, had it not been for
  Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing I might not even have gone down this path, which would be a shame since Kelly has had as much influence on comics as Schulz, Moore and Will Eisner, among others.
• 
  Greg

  This collection would be of interest to Pogo fans, cultural historians of the age, and those interested in the history of American comics. Not many of the biting, incisive comments for which Kelly is known. It seems he was trying to figure out just what kind of comic he wanted to write. A lot of less-than-interesting story lines, but one can sense a maturing author/artist.
• 
  Robert Kelly

  Great classic newspaper comics
• 
  Daniel Cooksey

  Masterful.
• 
  Joe Stevens

  The man could draw like nobody else. Just savor the art.
• 
  Dominick

  Volume two of Fantagraphics' projected complete run of Kelly's Pogo offers some landmark moments, notably the first Pogo for President campaign and the introduction of P.T. Bridgeport and his amazingly expressive lettering. The daily strips here especially are strong and funny, with no shortage of political and social satire bubbling beneath the innocuous surface--insofar as story after story about characters duping and even threatening to eat each other can be seen to be innocuous. The Sunday pages are a delight to look at but also, as some other reviewers have noted, seem slighter when measured against the dailies. Kelly always foregrounded humour, but the Sundays tend a bit more towards the lightly whimsical. The most disappointing feature of this book are R. C. Harvey's desultory annotations. Some offer worthwhile or at least interesting insights, but he seems not to have invested a lot of effort in them. For every reference he annotates, there are a couple he leaves out, and the choices do not always seem to me to be equally important. That's mainly a quibble, though.
• 
  Tom

  I Go Pogo, for the poignancy of the characters' relations, the ridiculous situations, the multitude of fractured historical, geographical and political references, the pseudo-scientific foo-fa-rah, and just for being loveable. Read the biographical and explanatory material surrounding the comics as well: it is not to be missed. I was brought to tears by the personal story behind "Kathryn B." in the December 8, 1952 strip, and rereading it made me love the characters and the artist even more. I hate that I have to wait a year for volume 3!
• 
  Adam

  This volume introduces the political bombast of P.T. Bridgeport and the all-holiday herald Bun Rab. We also meet a pair of Communist cow birds, and are treated to one of the best storylines so far, when Wiley Catt and the vulture Sarcophagus MacAbre work to turn public opinion against Churchy La Femme the turtle so that he'll be executed (and eaten).
  
  1952 is also the year "I go Pogo" became a political slogan.
  
  The Sunday strips in this collection are not as impressive; the storylines tend to drag and seem like afterthoughts in comparison with the dailies.
• 
  Ruz El

  Another dead solid reprint from Fantagraphics. Kelly's art firms up in this volume, and there's lots of great story arcs to be found, such as the first "I Go Pogo" election run that runs for a good part of one year and my favourite, a Little Orphan Annie spoof. Story and art aside, it's the word play that will keep you coming back.
  
  That said, I think I'm good with these two volumes of Pogo snuggled together in a nice slipcase. I'm sure I'd love the additional volumes, but I don't think I need them.
• 
  Lucy

  Two years' worth (1951-1952) of the Pogo cartoon, both dailies and Sundays. The main drawback to this book is its size & weight: Amazon.com says its shipping weight is 3.6 pounds (it seems like more when you're holding it to read) and measures 9" high by 11" wide & a full inch thick. Heavy reading for such a lightweight subject.
  Lots of great fun, though some plots seem to go on forever.
  In general I loved it all.
  
• 
  Stven

  I adore Walt Kelly's work, but this volume happens to contain a relatively poor stretch of it. The dailies are burdened with the bear P. T. Bridgeport who speaks in circus-poster fonts and the "I Go Pogo" campaign of 1952. The Sundays are played relentlessly for gags but fall short of funny again and again. I made it through two-thirds of the doldrums of the dailies before jumping ship to the Sundays, and I'm not going to get halfway through those.
• 
  Gurldoggie

  Clever, funny, exquisite to look at. There is nothing like Pogo, and never will be. Supposedly these volumes will be printed every Christmas for the next 12 years, and they will be at the top of my list for each one.
• 
  Michael

  The dailies pick up in the summer of 1952, as Kelly begins early broad political satire, but I had a hard time getting into the majority of the strips reprinted here. Most of the humor comes through as somewhat juvenile and somewhat cornball and the combination doesn't connect for me.
• 
  Philip

  The second collection in a series comprehensively reprinting Kelly's wonderful comic strip. Lush, beautiful artwork and finely-tuned nonsense. Not every strip has a joke, but they are all funny.
• 
  Ted

  wonderful
• 
  Erik

  Full of slapstick, satire, and word play, along with some great characters. Lots of fun.