Pogo's Sunday Punch

by Walt Kelly

Genres: Comics, Humor, Comic Strips, Comix

Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

American animator and cartoonist best known for the classic funny animal comic strip, Pogo. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1951 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their Silver T-Square Award in 1972, given to persons having "demonstrated outstanding dedication or service to the Society or the profession."

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've loved Pogo comic strips ever since I was a wee tad. The combination of puns, logical leaps, language magic, and drawings that use body English and facial expression of humanized animals made for some of the most perfect works of the 20th Century. At an estate sale just down the street,I lucked into a few of these old collections from the 50s. This one, published in 1957, compiles a bunch of strips from 1952 and 1953 intermixed with some delightful doggerel composed for the book, is unusual for the time, as there are no political or current events being satirized. Instead, we get fairy tale mash-ups, hilarious tales of Owl as a king who wants to become an Easter Bunny, and a dream about a goose who dives in the Fountain of Youth and becomes an egg who must be hatched by his wife. There's nothing in today's popular culture as perfectly realized as these classics.

[Al McCarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

1957 paperback, first edition. Sunday stories in a whimsical, yarns spun outside of the regular weekday narrative. Fairy tales and nonsense verse, accompanied by the essential illustrations in the Kelly style. No one like him yet, and since, nor ever. Jes' gorgeous. Diggin' fo' square roots with the Prince of Pompadoodle on Gimpy Wednesday.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelly’s strip had a richness of character in the drawing, in the swamp-based critters, their language, and the Byzantine plots over which all unfolded. There wasn’t anything like it when it arrived and nothing like it since it departed with Kelly’s death. This is a fun and lyrical read. The nonsense verse that decorates the pages between strip narratives runs a little to self-indulgence but reading the strips themselves is pure joy, better aloud, like great poetry, drama, or like the great storytellers (Dickens and Twain). It is a horrible shame that more of Pogo is not so readily available to the general reader. (Though I believe the folks who are bringing us The Complete Peanuts are embarking on a Complete Pogo. Hooray for that!)