Customer Reviews

Incompleat Pogo (The Best of Pogo)

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Reading this book (the 1954 edition pulled off of my grandmother's bookshelf) made me a Pogo fan. While some works of Kelly's are more rambunctious, this one is very subtle and wry in approach. I rated it a five. Its the most sublime Pogo I have ever read.

Anthony Boucher used to give brief reviews of Walt Kelly's Pogo books in the pages of _Fantasy & Science Fiction_ each year, a practice that I heartily approved of. I used to read _Pogo_ in the daily newspapers. But the truth is, the strip was much more designed to be read in book form. It was like an elaborate slapstick comedy that was too big to contain itself in a single set of four panels.

_The Incompleat Pogo_ (1953) is (I think) the sixth book in the series. In it, you will encounter such aimiable nonsense as the blindfold test to evaluate a comical book, the abortive search for a ground chunk in spring, the misadventures that followed when Albert swallowed an ameoba, the meeting of the keenest brains in the swamp to consider a suicide pack, the disappearence of the pup dog that had the whole swamp astir... and much more. Many strips today are funny, but they tend to have an edge to them. _Pogo_ has a gentle humor that is all too rare nowadays. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book.