Pogo

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.

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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Humor - Soap opera

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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.

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