So delightful. ( )

A terrific series of strips dedicated to wisest citizen of the Okefenokee, Pogo Possum. This volume, and Volume Two, take the strip through 1952, before Kelly began to seriously joust with politicians of the day. There's a smidgen of that here, but these early cartoons are more about the multitude of creatures--with human characteristics we all recognize--in the swamp. It's not until the late '50's and '60's that the hilarious political caricatures take over. ( )

Volume 1 of a potential 12 volume collection of all Pogo strips by Walt Kelly. This volume contains all Daily and Sunday strips from May 16, 1949 through December 30, 1950, plus the strips from the New York Star from November 2, 1948 to January 28, 1949.
Truly some of the greatest comic strips ever drawn. ( )

"Pogo" has long been my favorite comic strip. It meanders between being charming, whimsical, profound, and just plain funny - sometimes at the same time. And now Fantagraphics is finally doing a complete reprinting of the strip, slated for twelve volumes. Fantagraphics took the time to do it right, tracking down many strips that I've never seen, and I'm a "Pogo" completist. The book is sumptuous; it begins with essays and biography of Kelly, moves on to the first two years of the daily strip, the wonderful Sunday strips, where Kelly was really free to stretch his artistic wings, the New York Star strips where the comic strip first appeared in that format, and a very welcome annotation that clears one or two things up. A sample profundity on pg. 146: For complicated reasons, a butterfly sees himself as a guardian angel in search of someone to protect. He sees Porky-Pine and joyfully jumps on him, only to discover why that's not advisable with porcupines. "WOW!" he says, "You is practical UNguardable--- you needs protection from you own self!" "Who don't?", replies Porky. ( )

I was lucky enough to grow up on Pogo and I thank my stars for it on a regular basis. As soon as I had a debit card and a job I started buying up the old books.

The trouble is that they're not really reading copies (and of course they're not complete). Some of the reprints have good paper but a lot of the first editions are printed on that old paper that just crumbles after a while. I'll still buy the old books, because I want all the little pieces of extra art in them and the introductions by Kelly, but I am definitely collecting all of the Fantagraphics volumes.

This volume is beautiful and put together extremely well (more so than I expected). My income is very low and I'm frustratingly thrifty about most things, but this volume was worth every penny. Pogo is finally being done right. ( )