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One of the greatest comic strips of all time was Walt Kelly’s Pogo. Well drafted and lettered, and exceptionally well written, Pogo could be read on different levels. As a kid I read it for the absurdity and dialect of the denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp. As an adult I understood the political undertones and satire of the strip.
Walt Kelly is one of those folks that I wish I’d met. He was a true conservative, a devout anti-communist who also mocked the idiotic extremism of the John Birch Society (he referred to them as the Jack Acid Society) as well as Senator Joe McCarthy (Simple J. Malarky) and all with humor and acerbic wit.
Some of his strips hit too close to home for some newspapers, so he penned “bunny strips” to give left-leaning papers a more palatable option. The “bunny strips” often made the same points, but in a much more subtle manner. From the Wikipud:
Kelly would tell fans that if all they saw in Pogo were fluffy little bunnies, then their newspaper didn’t believe they were capable of thinking for themselves—or didn’t want them to.
Why am I going on about Pogo and Walt Kelly tonight? Because Friday the 13th comes on a Monday this month, bringing a whole week of bad luck. Fortunately for us, the curse is greatly diluted by each and every Overnight Open Thread.
Tags: comic strip, conservatism, Humor, Open thread, Pogo, Retro, sarcasm, Satire, Walt Kelly
