Books by Walt Kelly
Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder
by Walt Kelly
The first volume of the second-most requested strip collection reprint in Fantagraphics' history. Walt Kelly started his career at age 13 in Connecticut as a cartoonist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Walt Disney Studio, where he worked on classic animated films, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Rather than take sides in a bitter labor strike, he moved back east in 1941 and began drawing comic books.
It was during this time that Kelly created Pogo Possum. The character first appeared in Animal Comics as a secondary player in the “Albert the Alligator” feature. It didn’t take long until Pogo became the comic’s leading character. After WWII, Kelly became artistic director at the New York Star, where he turned Pogo into a daily strip. By late 1949, Pogo appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Until his death in 1973, Kelly produced a feature that has become widely cherished among casual readers and aficionados alike.
Kelly blended nonsense language, poetry, and political and social satire to make Pogo an essential contribution to American “intellectual” comics. As the strip progressed, it became a hilarious platform for Kelly’s scathing political views in which he skewered national bogeymen like J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon. Walt Kelly started when newspaper strips shied away from politics ― Pogo was ahead of its time and ahead of later strips (such as Doonesbury and The Boondocks) that tackled political issues. Our first (of 12) volume reprints approximately the first two years of Pogo ― dailies and (for the first time) full-color Sundays.
This first volume also introduces such enduring supporting characters as Porkypine, Churchy LaFemme, Beauregard Bugleboy, Seminole Sam, Howland Owl, and many others. And for Christmas, 1949, Kelly started his tradition of regaling his readers with his infamously and gloriously mangled Christmas carols.
Special features in this sumptuous premiere volume, which is produced with the full cooperation of Kelly’s heirs, include a biographical introduction by Kelly biographer Steve Thompson, an extensive section by comics historian R. C. Harvey explaining some of the more obscure current references of the time, a foreword by legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin, and more. 32 pages of full-color and 320 pages of black-and-white comics
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Volume 2: Bona Fide Balderdash (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
Pogo: Bona Fide Balderdash is the second volume in a series reprinting in its entirety the syndicated run of Walt Kelly's classic newspaper strip. It features all the strips from 1951 and 1952, which have been collected before, but in now long-out-of print books, and even there they were not as meticulously restored and reproduced as in this new series. Bona Fide Balderdash also reprints, literally for the first time ever in full color, the two full years of Sunday pages, also carefully restored and color-corrected, shot from the finest copies available. This second volume is once again edited and designed by the cartoonist's daughter, Carolyn Kelly, who is also handling much of the restoration work.
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Box Set: Volume 1 & 2: Through the Wild Blue Wonder and Bona Fide Balderdash (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
Collects the first 4 years of Walt Kelly’s landmark comic strip including the dailies and, for the first time in color, the intial first three years of Sundays in a handsome slipcase edition. Meticulously retouched by Kellys daughter Carolyn and features historical essays by POGO historians Steve Thompson and R.C. Harvey and famous friends-of-Kelly Jimmy Breslin and Stan Freberg plus much more!
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Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vols. 5 & 6 Boxed Set (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
This is the first time Pogo has been complete and in chronological order anywhere―with all 208 Sunday strips from these four years presented in lush full color for since their original appearance in Sunday newspaper sections. In Volume 5, the Okefenokee gang try to dig a canal to compete with the Suez. In Volume 6, Albert Alligator and Beauregard Bugleboy fend off a man-from-Mars.
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Volume 4: Under The Bamboozle Bush (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
In addition to presenting all of 1955 and 1956’s daily Pogo strips complete and in order for the first time anywhere (many of them once again scanned from original syndicate proofs, for their crispest and most detailed appearance ever), Pogo: The Syndicated Comic Strip Vol. 4 also contains all 104 Sunday strips from these two years, presented in lush full color for the first time since their original appearance in Sunday sections 60 years ago. Plus: the usual in-depth “Swamp Talk†historical annotations by R.C. Harvey, spectacular samples of Kelly’s work scanned from original art, and a whole lot more!
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Volume 6: Clean as a Weasel (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
This is the first time Pogo has been complete and in chronological order anywhere―with all 104 Sunday strips from these two years presented in lush full color for since their original appearance in Sunday newspaper sections. In Volume 6, Albert Alligator and Beauregard Bugleboy fend off a man-from-Mars, and Howland Owl investigates Communist espionage in the postal system. Then, it's election year and Okefenokee Swamp gets a new presidential candidate, Fremount the Bugboy. His campaign slogan, "Jes' Fine," sparks political debates about just who can and should be president ― maybe even a woman!
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Volume 5: Out Of This World At Home (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
This is the first time Pogo has been complete and in chronological order for the first time anywhere―with all 104 Sunday strips from these two years presented in lush full color for the first time since their original appearance in Sunday newspaper sections. In this volume, the Okefenokee gang decide to dig a canal to compete with the Suez (as soon as they can con one of their own into doing the digging) and consider going back to school. Among other hi-jinx, a flea comes a courtin' Beauregard the Dog.
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Pogo The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Volume 3: Evidence To The Contrary (Walt Kelly's Pogo)
by Walt Kelly
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. In addition to presenting all of 1953 and 1954's daily strips complete and in order for the first time anywhere (many of them once again scanned from original syndicate proofs, for their crispest and most detailed appearance ever), Pogo Volume 3: Evidence to the Contrary also contains all 104 Sunday strips from these two years, presented in lush full color for the first time since their original appearance in Sunday sections 60 years ago plus the usual in-depth Swamp Talk historical annotations by R.C. Harvey, spectacular samples of Kelly's work scanned from original art, and a whole lot more!
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