Volume Five of this delightful hardcover series includes the daily and Sunday strips (in color) for 1957 and 1958. There is surprisingly little political satire in these years, but plenty of wonderful art, slapstick humor, wordplay, character confusion, silliness, superstition, arcane knowledge, animal misbehavior, excitement and so much more I’ve run out of descriptors. We meet Pogo’s sister and her family for the first time, with her children looking like ever-smaller versions of Pogo, leading to some funny moments. The whole book is pretty funny, really. One nice thing about the series is you can pick up any one and enjoy it without having read the previous volumes. Volume Five is a particularly good place to start I would say. Walt’s Pogo strip is fully developed and brimming with charm and fun here, yet not bogged down by any one theme, a fine variety.
Highly recommended.
Previous volumes are reviewed here:
I need to figure out where this set of reprints picks up from the previous set of Fantagraphics reprints from 20 (?) years ago.
I don’t know, Dale, but this is the first complete collection of the entire strip.
I have those Fantagraphics paperback reprints from 20 years ago, but there is so much additional goodness in the new hardbound volumes that I didn’t hesitate to buy them. As a public service, let me say that the old series got as far as what is in volume 3, page 121, of the new series.
Thanks, Gary.