Pogo was the title of a long-running daily comic
strip created by Walt Kelly, as well as the name
of its principal character. Pogo, set in the
Georgia section of the Okefenokee Swamp, often
engaged in social and political satire through the
adventures of the strip's funny animals. The
strip also used much slapstick physical humor; the
same series of strips could often be enjoyed by
young children and by savvy adults on different
levels.

History
The characters of Pogo and Albert were created by
Kelly in 1943, for issue #1 of Animal Comics, in a
story called "Albert Takes The Cake." Both were
created as comic foils for a young black boy named
Bumbazine, who also lived in the Swamp. Kelly
found it hard to write for the human boy,
preferring to use the animals to their full comic
potential, and eventually phased Bumbazine out.
Pogo quickly took center stage, assuming the
straight man role that Bumbazine had occupied.

In 1948, Kelly was hired to draw political
cartoons for the short-lived New York Star
newspaper, and decided to do a daily comic strip
featuring the characters he had created for Animal
Comics. Pogo debuted on October 4 of that year,
and ran continuously until the paper folded on
January 28, 1949. On May 16 of the same year, the
strip was picked up for national distribution by
Post-Hall Syndicate, and ran continuously until
Kelly's death from diabetes in 1973. Kelly's
wife, Selby, and assistant, Don Morgan, continued
the strip to fulfill contractual obligations,
before retiring it in 1975. The Los Angeles Times
revived the strip under the title Walt Kelly's
Pogo in 1989, written at first by Larry Doyle and
Neil Sternecky, then by Kelly's son, Peter; but
interest waned and the revived strip ran only a
few years.


Formula
Instead of the usual "gag-a-day" format of most
strips, a single Pogo daily strip typically had
three or four puns, double entendres, and
occasional in-jokes (visual as well as verbal) as
well as the main gag or situation of the day.

In addition, each strip would work its way into
one or more concurrently running continuing
storylines, successfully melding both the humor
and soap opera style strips popular at the time. A
reader could pick up Pogo each day and laugh at
the jokes, or could continue reading every day and
pick up the full story. Often times, Kelly would
suddenly drop in a non-sequitur of sorts with
throwaway one-shot gag strips that didn't follow
the regular continuity.

These over-arching storylines were best seen when
the strips were eventually collected and edited
into book form by publisher Simon and Schuster. In
addition, Kelly would provide new linking panels,
and sometimes entirely new stories for these
collections. As time went on, Kelly would produce
entire books of original material, including
original illustrations, verse, and short stories,
to be sold alongside the reprint collections.


Characters
No definitive list has ever been made of every
character that appeared in Pogo over the 27 years
the strip ran, but the best estimates put the
total cast at over 300. Kelly would create
characters as he needed them, and discarded them
when they ceased to be funny, or had served their
purpose. Most characters were at least nominally
male, but a few female characters appeared
regularly. Kelly has been quoted as saying that
all the characters reflect different aspects of
his personality.

Even though most characters had full names, in
many cases other characters would refer to them by
nicknames or simply by their species. For example,
Howland Owl was almost always referred to as
"Owl." Churchy LaFemme, a turtle, would
occasionally be referred to as "Turtle" (or
"Turkle," in Swamp-speak). Beauregard was
usually be referred to as "Hound Dog," and so
on.

The main recurring characters in the strip
included:

Pogo: an opossum (or "possum"), Kelly's lead
character served as an everyman, sharing simple
homespun wisdom with the strip's readers. Pogo
was the most honest, and wisest, character in the
swamp, and usually did his best to stay out of the
harebrained schemes dreamt up by other characters,
preferring to go fishing in flat-bottomed,
slab-sided scows (many of which were named after
Kelly's friends, family, and people he wanted to
honor in some small way).

Albert: an alligator. Usually the comic foil for
Pogo, Albert was rather dimwitted and found
himself bumbling into one catastrophe after
another. Having an alligator's voracious
appetite, Albert would often eat things
indiscriminately, and was accused on more than one
occasion of eating another character.

Churchy LaFemme: a turtle. His name is a play on
the French phrase "cherchez la femme" originated
by Alexandre Dumas, meaning "look for the woman"
(or, as Garry Trudeau translated it, "keep an eye
peeled for broads"). Superstitious to a fault
(for example, panicking when he discovers that
Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday that month),
Churchy usually tries to avoid trouble but always
ends up caught in whatever the current ongoing
scheme is. Churchy may have once been a pirate, as
for the longest time he wore a buccaneer's hat
and was sometimes referred to as "Captain
LaFemme."

Howland Owl: Owl is the swamp's resident
scientist, and not a very good one. In his
earliest appearances, he wore a pointed wizard's
cap. The most learned man in the swamp, he once
tried to open a school but had to close it due to
lack of interest. Most of the harebrained schemes
come from the mind of Owl.

Porkypine: porcupine, usually referred to as
"Porky," a misanthrope and cynic. Porky never
smiled in the strip (except for one time when the
lights were out). Pogo's best friend, and
probably the second wisest character in the strip,
Porky has two weaknesses. One is his infatuation
for Mis Mam'selle, and the other is his complete
inability to properly tell a joke. Porky also has
a doppleganger, Uncle Baldwin, who wears a
trenchcoat to hide the fact that he is bald from
the neck down. Porky's inability to properly tell
a joke is a recurring gag.

Beauregard Fontleroy Bugleboy: a dog and
occasional policeman. Loyal to a fault -- many
faults, actually.

Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah: a beautiful French skunk
(modelled after Kelly's mistress, who would later
become his second wife), Miz Mam'selle is sought
by a number of men in the swamp (most notably
Porky), but she only has eyes for Pogo.

Miz Beaver: a beaver, washerwoman for the Swamp,
and best friend to (and occasional match-maker
for) Miss Mam'selle.

Deacon Mushrat: the local holy man, the Deacon
speaks in Old English style gothic lettering. He
usually ends up playing straight man to the other
con-men that live in the Swamp.

Molester Mole (nee Mole MacCarony): usually
referred to simply as "Mole," is a nearsighted
grifter living in the Swamp. Modeled somewhat
after recluse Howard Hughes (early on he carried a
spray bottle full of disinfectant wherever he
went), Mole is always looking for a get-rich quick
scheme. He is also often portrayed as intolerant,
and used as a parody of right-wing reactionaries.

P.T. Bridgeport: a bear and circus man, modeled
after P.T. Barnum, the most famous resident of
Kelly's boyhood home of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
His speech baloons resemble classic circus
posters.

Seminole Sam: a fox and con man. He takes his name
from the Seminole tribe of Native Americans.


Satire and politics
Kelly always used Pogo to comment on the human
condition, and from time to time, this drifted
into politics. Pogo ran for President (or was
forced to run by his friends, although he never
actually campaigned) in 1952, 1956, and 1960.
Kelly used these fake campaigns as excuses to hit
the stump himself for voter registration
campaigns, with the slogan "Pogo says: If you
can't vote my way, vote anyway, but VOTE!"

Perhaps the most famous example of the strip's
satirical edge came in 1953, when Kelly introduced
a polecat character named "Simple J. Malarkey"
-- a caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Comic
historians noted that this move showed significant
courage on Kelly's part considering the influence
the politician wielded at that time, and the
possibility of potentially scaring away
subscribing newspapers.

As time went on, other popular figures found
themselves caricaturized in the pages of Pogo. By
the time the 1968 Presidential Campaign rolled
around, it seemed the entire Swamp was populated
by P.T. Bridgeport's "wind-up candidates,"
including representations of George Romney, Ronald
Reagan, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George
Wallace, and Robert F. Kennedy. When the strips
from this time were collected in Equal Time For
Pogo, the Publisher wanted to edit out the strips
including Kennedy's doppleganger, but Kelly
insisted on keeping them in to pay honor to the
slain candidate.

In the early 1970s, Kelly used a collection of
characters called the Bulldogs to mock the secrecy
and paranoia of the Nixon Administration. The
Bulldogs included dopplegangers of J. Edgar
Hoover, John Mitchell, and Spiro Agnew. Always
referred to, but never seen, was "The Chief,"
who we are led to believe was Nixon himself.

When the strip was revived in 1989, Doyle and
Sternecky attempted to recreate this tradition
with an old moose that looked like Ronald Reagan,
and a jackrabbit resembling George H. W. Bush.


Swamp-speak
The predominant language in Pogo is referred to by
many as "swamp-speak." It is, essentially, a
rural, Southern U.S. English dialect with creative
spelling and pronunciation. The dialect and
phonetics used are very similar to those used by
Mark Twain in his novel Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.

Kelly had a good ear for language, and often
created new words to fit his characters (note some
of the Quotes, below), including an exclaimation,
"rowrbazzle".


Other media
Pogo quickly branched out from the comic pages
into other media, although not quite to the degree
of many contemporary comic strips. Some attribute
the comparative paucity of material to Kelly's
pickiness about the quality of merchandise
attached to his characters.


Music
An LP called Songs Of The Pogo was released in
1956, collecting a number of Kelly's verses (most
of which had previously appeared in Pogo books)
set to music by both Kelly and orchestra leader
Norman Monath.

While professional singers provided most of the
vocals on the album, Kelly himself contributed
lead vocals on two tracks: Go Go Pogo (for which
he also composed the music), and Lines Upon A
Tranquil Brow. He also contributed a spoken
portion for Man's Best Friend.

Songs Of The Pogo was released on compact disc in
2004, including previously unreleased material.


Animation
Three animated cartoons were created based on
Pogo.

The first, Pogo's Special Birthday Special, was
produced by animator Chuck Jones in honor of the
Comic Strip's twentieth anniversary in 1968. It
starred June Foray as the voice of both Pogo and
Miss Mam'selle. The general consensus is that the
special, produced for NBC television, failed to
capture the charm of the comic strip and is
generally dismissed by fans.

Walt and Selby Kelly themselves wrote and animated
We Have Met the Enemy, And He Is Us in 1970,
largely due to Kelly's dissatisfaction with the
Birthday Special. The short, with its
anti-pollution message, was animated by hand, and
some have blamed the strain of the project on
worsening Kelly's health and hastening his death
three years later. The storyboards for the cartoon
formed the first half of the book of the same
title.

In 1980, the motion picture I Go Pogo was
released. Directed by Marc Paul Chinoy, this stop
motion animation (or "Claymation") picture
featured the voices of Skip Hinnant as Pogo; Ruth
Buzzi as Miz Beaver and Miss Mam'sell; Stan
Freberg as Albert; Arnold Stang as Churchy;
Jonathan Winters as Porky, Mole, and Wiley Catt;
and Vincent Price as the Deacon. While some fans
have embraced the movie, others have dismissed it
as (as with the Birthday Special) lacking Kelly's
wit and charm.

None of the three animated versions of Pogo are
currently available on home video.


Quotes
"We have met the enemy and he is us." 
"We are surrounded by insurmountable
opportunity." 
"Don't take life so serious - it ain't nohow
permanent." 
Deck us all with Boston Charlie
Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo! 

Collections

The 45 books published by Simon & Schuster
Pogo (1951) 
I Go Pogo (1952) 
Uncle Pogo So-So Stories (1953) 
The Pogo Papers (1953) 
The Pogo Stepmother Goose (1954) 
The Incompleat Pogo (1954) 
The Pogo Peek-A-Book (1955) 
Potluck Pogo (1955) 
The Pogo Sunday Book (1956) 
The Pogo Party (1956) 
Songs of the Pogo (1956) 
Pogo's Sunday Punch (1957) 
Positively Pogo (1957) 
The Pogo Sunday Parade (1958) 
G.O. Fizzickle Pogo (1958) 
Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo (1959)

The Pogo Sunday Brunch (1959) 
Pogo Extra Election Special (1960) 
Beau Pogo (1960) 
Gone Pogo (1961) 
Pogo ā la Sundae (1961) 
Instant Pogo (1962) 
The Jack Acid Society Black Book (1962) 
The Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog (1963) 
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie (1963) 
The Return of Pogo (1965) 
The Pogo Poop Book (1966) 
Prehysterical Pogo (In Pandemonia) (1967) 
Equal Time for Pogo (1968) 
Pogo: Prisoner of Love (1969) 
Impollutable Pogo (1970) 
Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us (1972) 
Pogo Revisited (1974), a compilation of Instant
Pogo, The Jack Acid Society Black Book and The
Pogo Poop Book 
Pogo Re-Runs (1974), a compilation of Pogo, The
Pogo Party and Pogo Extra Election Special 
Pogo Romances Recaptured (1975), a compilation of
Pogo: Prisoner of Love and The Incompleat Pogo 
Pogo's Bats and the Belles Free (1976) 
Pogo's Body Politic (1976) 
A Pogo Panorama (1977), a compilation of The Pogo
Stepmother Goose, The Pogo Peek-A-Book and Uncle
Pogo So-So Stories 
Pogo's Double Sundae (1978), a compilation of The
Pogo Sunday Parade and The Pogo Sunday Brunch 
Pogo's Will Be That Was (1979), a compilation of
G.O. Fizzickle Pogo and Positively Pogo 
The Best of Pogo (1982) 
Pogo Even Better (1984) 
Outrageously Pogo (1985) 
Pluperfect Pogo (1987) 
Phi Beta Pogo (1989) 

Books released by other publishers
Pogo For President: Selections from I Go Pogo
(Crest Books, 1964) 
The Pogo Candidature (Sheed, Andrews & McMeel,
1976) 
Pogofiles for Pogophiles (Spring Hollow Books,
1992) 
Complete Pogo Comics: Pogo & Albert, volumes 1-4
(Eclipse Comics, 19xx) [reprints of pre-strip
comic book stories, unfinished) 
Pogo, volumes 1-11 (Fantagraphics Books,
1994-2000) 
Pogopedia (Spring Hollow Books, 2001) 

Dell Publishing Company comic books featuring
Pogo
Animal Comics, issues 17, 23, 24, 25 (1947) 
Pogo Possum, issues 1-16 (1949-1954) 
Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, Dell Four
Color issues 105 and 148 (1945-1946) 
Pogo Parade (1953) 

Works influenced by Pogo
Walt Kelly's work has influenced a number of
prominent comic artists.

In the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book,
cartoonist Bill Watterson listed Pogo as one of
the three greatest influences on his own acclaimed
strip, Calvin and Hobbes. (The two other strips
were Peanuts and Krazy Kat. In a perfect example
of 'great minds think alike', Pogo itself
referenced Krazy Kat in many ways during its run,
including a series of strips devoted to examining
that immortal symbol of the earlier strip: the
brick.) 
Pogo has been cited as an influence by Jeff
MacNelly (Shoe), Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Bill
Holbrook (Kevin and Kell), and Mark O'Hare
(Citizen Dog), among others. 
Alan Moore, most notable for writing the graphic
novel Watchmen, made the January 1985 issue of
Saga of the Swamp Thing (titled "Pog") a tribute
to Pogo. 
The artwork in Jeff Smith's Bone comic book
series is strongly influenced by Walt Kelly's
style. 
Wally Wood, a longtime illustrator for MAD
Magazine, parodied Kelly's characters on several
occasions, most notably in a 1955 offering
entitled "Gopo Gossum".