And Pogo? Pogo was an almost opposite approach to the comic strip. The drawings were as lush as the foliage of its Okefenokee setting, and the dialogue was as lush as the drawings. With the possible exception of Porkypine, there was not a soul-searching character in the cast of hundreds. Pogo was trusting, good-natured, and innocent, which generally meant it was Pogo's larder that got ransacked whenever someone got hungry. Most of the other characters were bombastic, short-sighted, full of self-importance, and not just a little stupid. What better vehicle for political satire and commentary? Pogo was largely before my time, so, like Peanuts, I can only imagine how it must have shocked its first readers. Considering how controversial many papers find Doonesbury in the 1980s, one has to wonder how Pogo got away with its political criticism 30 years earlier.
Again, much of Pogo's magic for me was in the beautiful drawings. where the animals looked so real and animated you imagined their noses were probably cold to the touch. Part of the magic was the amazing dialects they spoke, which mangled English with awful puns and unintended meanings. Part of it was the gutsiness of attacking the fur right on the "funny" pages and pulling no punch. Part of it was the strip's basic faith in human decency underneath all the smoke and bluster. Part of it was the rambling storytelling, where every main road to the conclusion was avoided in favor of endless detours. Part of it was that Grundoon talked only in consonants, P.T. Bridgeport talked in circus posters, and Deacon Mushrat talked in Gothic type. And, of course, part of it was that it was very, very funny. The strip had a mood, a pace, and atmosphere that has not been seen since in comics.
