Customer Reviews

Pogo Peek-A-Book (The Best of Pogo)

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Kelly wrote wonderful, gentle comics. There were the daily Pogo strips, of course, but others as well. This starts with an amusing but baffling sample of faux Old English. Next comes 'More Mother Goosery Rinds' with Albert in the lead role, looking "like she had swallowed a bandicoot." The story wanders aimlessly through the proper way to write fairy tales, algebra like it's never been done before, and more. Next, 'Gore Blimey' sends up the hard-boiled detective genre, with images and text that lose track each other early on, then rejoin in a unexpected finish. 'Glory,' my favorite in this collection, is a short, elegant parable on the insanity of war. 'Suffern on the Steppes' reminds us that Kelly wrote these pieces when the Cold War was at its hottest. Kelly's contribution was to soothe nerves jangled by the daily news, exaggerating the stereotypes of the evil empire into harmless silliness.

They just don't make them like Pogo any more. It wouldn't be sophisticated enough for today's audiences, and today's audiences are poorer for that.

//wiredweird

This, in my personal opinion, is the best collection of Pogo material ever put between a single set of covers. Walt Kelly was at the height of his powers and working outside the comic strip format, presenting stories told in graphic narrative, illustrated prose, and even poetry. The subjects range from Mother Goose (as portrayed by Albert the Alligator) to pulp detective novels (Albert playing the fleabitten private eye) to the Cold War space race (the main Pogo cast stepping up to skewer socialist rhetoric and discover what the Moon was really made of), with a side trip into the world of children and how they interact that rings truer than the whole of "expert opinion" on the matter. If you don't laugh throughout the gleeful nonsense of "The Bloody Drip Writhes Again", then you might want to take your funnybone in for a checkup!

For similar reads of equal pleasure, I highly recommend acquiring Uncle Pogo So-So Stories and The Pogo Stepmother Goose. Together with the Peek-A-Book, they make a superlative trilogy of Kelly at his most imaginative.