Political Pogo

Walt Kelly and Pogo Possum

At its peak, Walt Kelly's possum appeared in nearly 500 newspapers in 14 countries. Pogo's exploits were collected into more than four dozen books, which collectively sold close to 30 million copies. Pogo already had had a successful life in comic books, previous to syndication. The increased visibility of the newspaper strip and popular trade paperback titles allowed Kelly's characters to branch into other media, such as television, children's records, and even a theatrical film.

Walt Kelly's characters are a sardonic reflection of human nature —venal, greedy, confrontational, selfish and stupid —but portrayed good-naturedly and rendered harmless by their own bumbling ineptitude and overall innocence. Most characters were nominally male, but a few female characters also appeared regularly. Kelly has been quoted as saying that all the characters reflected different aspects of his own personality. Kelly's characters were also self-aware of their comic strip surroundings.[3] He frequently had them leaning up against or striking matches on the panel borders, breaking the fourth wall, or making tongue-in-cheek, "inside" comments about the nature of comic strips in general.

Pogo Meets the Real World
In 1952, Kelly began to hit his stride with Pogo. The possum threw his hat into the ring for the U.S. presidential election. He became the candidate of many college students, and the slogan "I Go Pogo" appeared on posters and lapel pins. Pogo would run for president in every election through 1972 and again in 1988. Also in 1952, the first caricature of an identifiable public figure appeared in Pogo, a bullying backwoods wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey, who bore more than a passing resemblance to U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin.

McCarthy was becoming famous and powerful by investigating the U.S. Army and searching for Communists in the U.S. State Department. He used misinformation and bullying to manipulate the media and Senate witnesses to support his claims. These were tactics that Kelly despised, and he made Malarkey look evil and dangerous. Some newspapers complained that the comics pages were not the place for politics. Some editors moved the strip to the editorial page, others dropped it all together, and a few demanded that Kelly stop drawing caricatures of McCarthy. Kelly responded by putting Malarkey's head in a sack. That only made Malarkey more ominous, since the sack resembled the hoods worn by Klansmen or executioners.

Though an unapologetic liberal, Kelly was never afraid to poke fun at any politician. In 1968, Pogo strips featured characters based on Democratic presidential candidates Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. The 1970s brought even more acidic caricatures of U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Once again, some newspapers dropped Pogo and others moved it off the comics page. This time, Kelly provided replacement "bunny strips," non-political gags often featuring cute rabbits.

The Jack Acid Society
In the early 1960s, Kelly took on the ultra-conservative John Birch Society with a series of strips dedicated to Mole and Deacon's efforts to weed out Anti-Americanism (as they saw it) in the swamp, which led them to form "The Jack Acid Society." ("Named after Mr. Acid?" "Well, it wasn't named before him.") The reference is to John Birch, who was killed 13 years before the creation (in 1958) of the organization that bears his name.[citation needed] The Jack Acids (the name is an obvious pun on "jackasses") modeled themselves on the only "real" Americans: Indians. Everyone the Jack Acids suspected of not being a true American was put on their blacklist, until eventually everyone but Mole himself was blacklisted. One of the longest-running storylines in the strip's history, the strips were collected by themselves (with some original verse and text pieces) in The Jack Acid Society Black Book, the only Pogo collection not to include the main character's name in the title[13] and one of only two books (the other being Pogo: Prisoner Of Love) to comprise a single storyline.

Kelly used Pogo to comment on the human condition, and from time to time, this drifted into politics. Pogo was a reluctant "candidate" for President (although he never campaigned) in 1952 and 1956. (The phrase "I Go Pogo," originally a parody of Dwight D. Eisenhower's iconic campaign slogan "I Like Ike," appeared on giveaway promotional lapel pins featuring Pogo, and was also used by Kelly as a book title.) A 1952 campaign rally at Harvard degenerated into chaos sufficient to be officially termed a riot, and police responded. The Pogo Riot was a significant event for the class of ’52; for its 25th reunion, Pogo was the official mascot.[9] In 1960 the swamp's nominal candidate was an egg with two protruding webbed feet — a comment on the relative youth of John F. Kennedy. The egg kept saying: "Well, I've got time to learn; we rabbits have to stick together."

Kelly, who claimed to be against "the extreme Right, the extreme Left, and the extreme Middle," used these fake campaigns as excuses to hit the stump himself for voter registration campaigns, with the slogan "Pogo says: If you can't vote my way, vote anyway, but VOTE!"

Kelly's strips championed the underdog, the powerless, and the threatened. In the late 1960s, his attention turned to the environment, and he provided the world with an unforgettable slogan. As Pogo looked upon a large pile of trash that was cluttering the swamp, he said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." This was a paraphrase of a famous dispatch announcing the victory at the battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." Kelly's version became a household catch phrase.

Pogo broke the ground for comic strips that followed, especially those that wanted to say something about the world. Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury and Berke Breathed's Bloom County both featured political commentary. Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes borrowed a lot of Pogo's sense of whimsy and humanity.

Jeff Smith, creator of Bone, a fantasy comic book that is published around the world, wrote: "Whenever I get to thinking I've got this whole cartooning gig down cold, I just pull out a Pogo book and see how much better it can be."

Pogo has resurfaced again in the last 6 years, as evidenced by this political cartoon that hits political controversy in the head or gut, take your pick.