Ten Ever-Lovin Years With Pogo
by Walt Kelly
Category: American wit and humor, Pictorial

Pogo, a possum by trade, first appeared in a comic-book feature called "Bumbazine and Albert the Alligator" in 1943. Six years later, he was on his way up through the newspaper columns into the homes of millions of Americans. Today Pogo is as household a word as "blueberry pie," "who's-got-the-funnies?" and "probabobbly-me." Here now is the official tenth-anniversary history and commemoration of Pogo, spelled out in a selection of daily strips, Sunday pages, Pogo book stories and a sprinkling of verse, all wrapped up with a running commentary on this past decade in the Okefenokee Swamp and elsewhere by Walt Kelly. Life in the Swamp and life in the Elsewhere have more than a passing resemblance, as Pogo readers have long been aware. Kelly's creations are deeply embroiled in everything from Presidential elections to atomic bombs, from civil liberties and juvenile delinquency to schools and the Olympics, from beatniks and baseball to taxes, TV, togetherness, and just plain fun. This book is an attempt to answer the flood of letters over the years, asking, demanding, begging, cajoling and petitioning Kelly to gather together some of his work as a permanent collection. So here it is: ten ever lovin' blue eyed years - with Pogo and his friends and with the assorted pleasures and calamities, real and fancied, that have in these uneasy years shaken their world and ours.