Out Nov. 20, 2013
It’s in this volume (featuring another two years’ worth of Pogo strips)
that we meet one of Walt Kelly’s boldest political caricatures. Folks
across America had little trouble equating the insidious wildcat Simple
J. Malarkey with the ascendant anti-Communist senator, Joseph McCarthy.
The subject was sensitive enough that by the following year a
Providence, Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop the strip if
Malarkey’s face were to appear in it again. Kelly’s response? He had
Malarkey appear again but put a bag over the character’s head for his
next appearance. Ergo, his face did not appear. (Typical of Kelly’s
layers of verbal wit, the character Malarkey was hiding from was a
“Rhode Island Red” hen, referencing both the source of his need to
conceal Malarkey and the underlying political controversy.) The entirety
of these sequences can be found in this book. But the Malarkey
storyline is only a tiny portion of those rich, eventful two years,
which include such classic sequences as con-man Seminole Sam’s attempts
to corner the market on water (which Porkypine’s Uncle Baldwin tries to
one-up by cornering the market on dirt); a return engagement of Pup Dog
and Houn’dog’s blank-eyed Little Orphan Annie parody “Li’l Arf and
Nonny”; Churchy La Femme going in drag to deliver a love poem he wrote,
Cyrano style, on Deacon Mush-rat’s behalf to Sis Boombah (the
aforementioned hen); P.T. Bridgeport’s return to the swamp in search of
new talent; and of course two rousing choruses of “Deck Us All With
Boston Charlie.” In addition to presenting all of 1953 and 1954’s daily
strips complete and in order for the first time anywhere (many of them
once again scanned from original syndicate proofs, for their crispest
and most detailed appearance ever), Pogo Volume 3: “Evidence to the Contrary”
also contains all 104 Sunday strips from these two years, presented in
lush full color for the first time since their original appearance in
Sunday sections 60 years ago — plus the usual in-depth “Swamp Talk”
historical annotations by R.C. Harvey, spectacular samples of Kelly’s
work scanned from original art, and a whole lot more! Black & white
with 104 pages of color.
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