Pogo

Pogo was a long-running (1948-1975, plus a brief late-1980s revival) newspaper comic starring Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme, Miz Beaver and other talking animals in Georgia's Okeefenokee Swamp. Starting from a fairy-tale-esque comic book and quickly moving to the newspapers, the strip became one of the all-time comic strip classics. Creator Walt Kelly, a former Disney animator, filled his strip with dozens, if not hundreds, of characters, all with distinct personalities, motivations and goals that would frequently collide. Kelly's ear for dialect and language, in addition to his skill with nonsense poetry, has been compared to Mark Twain and Ogden Nash.

While superficially a silly comic about funny animals, the strip was also a satire -- subtle and, well, not -- about modern times, and frequently delved into politics -- so much so that Pogo often found itself the target of criticism and censorship. In such cases, Kelly often responded in kind; for instance, by placing a paper bag over the head of a controversial character (based on Senator Joseph McCarthy) when a newspaper said that they would drop the strip if his face ever appeared again. Later, he would write "fluffy bunny" versions of his Sunday strips, featuring rabbit characters engaging in simple slapstick, whose real purpose was to inform the readers that their local newspaper was censoring its comics page.

Subject ID: 73755

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Pogo was a long-running (1948-1975, plus a brief late-1980s revival) newspaper comic starring Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme, Miz Beaver and other talking animals in Georgia's Okeefenokee Swamp. Starting from a fairy-tale-esque comic book and quickly moving to the newspapers, the strip became one of the all-time comic strip classics. Creator Walt Kelly, a former Disney animator, filled his strip with dozens, if not hundreds, of characters, all with distinct personalities, motivations and goals that would frequently collide. Kelly's ear for dialect and language, in addition to his skill with nonsense poetry, has been compared to Mark Twain and Ogden Nash.

While superficially a silly comic about funny animals, the strip was also a satire -- subtle and, well, not -- about modern times, and frequently delved into politics -- so much so that Pogo often found itself the target of criticism and censorship. In such cases, Kelly often responded in kind; for instance, by placing a paper bag over the head of a controversial character (based on Senator Joseph McCarthy) when a newspaper said that they would drop the strip if his face ever appeared again. Later, he would write "fluffy bunny" versions of his Sunday strips, featuring rabbit characters engaging in simple slapstick, whose real purpose was to inform the readers that their local newspaper was censoring its comics page.

Subject ID: 73755

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