History ComicStrip / Pogo

-->'''Porkypine:''' One might think that the employees of a comic strip would have a sense of humor.

-->''(Pogo and Albert look at him indifferently)

-->This is a humorous anecdote. A goat lost his nose -- the first man says, "What will he smell with now?" The other replies, "As bad as ever." Haw haw haw?

* NeverHeardThatOneBefore: One strip has a ladybug who's tired of always being told to "fly away home."

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: A rare aversion. Albert Alligator, while generally lazy and having accidentally swallowed a cast member or two, and at times getting duped into working for any miscreants, is still generally a nice guy.

[[PrintLongRunners Long-running]] (1948-1975, plus a brief late-1980s revival) newspaper comic starring Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme, Miz Beaver and other {{talking animal}}s in Georgia's Okeefenokee Swamp. Starting from a fairy-tale-esque comic book and quickly moving to the newspapers, the strip became one of the all-time comic strip classics. Creator Walt Kelly, a former {{Disney}} animator, filled his strip with dozens, if not hundreds, of characters, all with distinct personalities, motivations and goals that would frequently collide. Kelly's ear for dialect and language, in addition to his skill with nonsense poetry, has been compared to MarkTwain and OgdenNash.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pogo_4816.gif
[[caption-width:312:I Go, Pogo!]]

'''This comic strip provides examples of:'''

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the rapier wit of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''ComicStrip/BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''Kevin & Kell'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''ComicStrip/BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''Kevin & Kell'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Long-running (1948-1975, plus a brief late-1980s revival) newspaper comic starring Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme, Miz Beaver and other {{talking animal}}s in Georgia's Okeefenokee Swamp. Starting from a fairy-tale-esque comic book and quickly moving to the newspapers, the strip became one of the all-time comic strip classics. Creator Walt Kelly, a former {{Disney}} animator, filled his strip with dozens, if not hundreds, of characters, all with distinct personalities, motivations and goals that would frequently collide. Kelly's ear for dialect and language, in addition to his skill with nonsense poetry, has been compared to MarkTwain and OgdenNash.

* PaintingTheFourthWall: P.T. Bridgeport and Deacon Muskrat speak in stylized fonts. Albert, Churchy, and others are known to lean on or against the comic border for support - and Albert even lights matches by striking them against the borders. One famous strip even has Albert explaining to Bear how the modern comic strip works ... by pointing to features in their own strip.

* AlliterativeName: Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Beauregard Bugleboy, Porky Pine, Barnstable Bear, Mister Miggle

* NeverSmileAtACrocodile: Averted with Al.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''Kevin & Kell'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

* AuthorExistenceFailure Walt worked himself basically to death, trying to, with his wife, Selby, animate his own Pogo special while keeping the daily strip going, making it due to his dissatisfaction with the ChuckJones Pogo special.

* FunetikAksent: The bits that weren't made up. It took me years to figure out that the 'per-loo' they made out of everything (including [[EverythingsNuttierWithSquirrels squirrels]]--inside adding to the flavour) is in some areas spelled 'pilaf'.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: While several book collections were published during the strip's run, all of these are long out of print. In 2007 Fantagraphics Books announced the imminent launch of a ''Complete Pogo'' series reprinting the entire run of the strip (a la their ''Complete {{Peanuts}}'' series); due to apparent difficulties in obtaining decent source material for some of the early Sunday strips, it took until November, 2011 for Volume One (of a projected twelve) to ''finally'' see release.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Thousands.

* SatireParodyPastiche: ''{{Pogo}}'' is the very ''definition'' of satire.

* TertiarySexualCharacteristics: Most female swamp critters wear bonnets and/or aprons, and Hepzibah wears a skirt. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in an early strip in which Miz Hop Frog fools Pogo into thinking she's Mister Hop Frog simply by removing her apron.
* TheMagicPokerEquation: parodied with the three bats. Six aces tended to be a losing hand.

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: a rare aversion. Albert Alligator, while generally lazy and having accidentally swallowed a cast member or two, and at times getting duped into working for any miscreants, is still generally a nice guy.

* TalkingAnimal: The ones that aren't {{Funny Animal}}s.

* AnthropomorphicShift: Hepzibah is a minor example, but over time her nose got smaller and her legs got longer.
* ArtEvolution: More noticeable with some characters than others -- Pogo himself looked basically the same throughout the strip's whole run.

* DeepSouth The deepest.
* DorkHorseCandidate Pogo Possum, against his will, ran for president on three occasions; a write-in campaign in the real world attracted a surprising amount of support.

* {{Fictionary}} ("swamp-speak", based on U.S. southern dialect, with many made-up words. Many, many. Kelly was a master of nonsense verse, and had absolutely no shame in using his skill at the drop of a hat.)
* FunetikAksent: the bits that weren't made up. It took me years to figure out that the 'per-loo' they made out of everything (including [[EverythingsNuttierWithSquirrels squirrels]]--inside adding to the flavour) is in some areas spelled 'pilaf'.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed (Simple J. Malarkey was Senator Joseph [=McCarthy=] as a bobcat) In this case, though, the intent was pretty obviously not "not harming" the celebrity in question; the Jack Acid Society storyline was one of the most savage indictments of a politician in comics since ThomasNash.

* OnlySaneMan (Pogo and Porkypine were frequently the only two sane characters in an environment where, e.g., a rabbit can be celebrating all known holidays at the start of the year to save time, an owl and a turtle might develop advertising slogans for dirt ("D as in dirt! I as in dirt! R as in dirt! T as in orange pekoe!") while, at the same time, an alligator is plotting to make his fortune and retire to the Sunny Bermoothies ("Land of the onion and the eel!") by ordering a million boxes of dirt with a penny-a-box discount, and then return the boxes. Sanity is very definitely an optional extra in the swamp.

* SatireParodyPastiche (''{{Pogo}}'' is the very ''definition'' of satire)

* StrawmanPolitical (dozens of short-term visitors to the swamp were thinly-veiled caricatures of politicians of the day)
* TalkingAnimal: the ones that aren't {{Funny Animal}}s.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''{{Kevin & Kell}}'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''Kevin & Kell'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), Bill Holbrook (''Webcomic/Kevin&Kell'') and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), and Dana Simpson (''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.

Charming ... surprisingly warm-hearted, even at its most vicious ... clever and occasionally subversive, ''Pogo'' was ''TheOffice'' of its day ... if ''The Office'' had a much larger cast, the writers of ''TheColbertReport'', the heart of [[HLMencken H.L. Mencken]], and the idealism of [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]]. Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated. Bill Watterson (''CalvinAndHobbes''), Berkeley Breathed (''BloomCounty''), Jeff Smith (''{{Bone}}''), Garry Trudeau (''{{Doonesbury}}''), Jim Henson (''TheMuppetShow''), and Dana Simpson (''OzyAndMillie'') have all cited it as inspiration.