Number 2551: A Pogo/Aesop fable

Walt Kelly did like many story tellers, using fables and fairy tales that go back centuries to tell a modern version. “The Ants and the Grasshopper” is a well known Aesop’s fable that promotes work during the season to get food, rather than goofing off on other things, and ending up with no food.

The fable, here from the Library of Congress, is harsh. We know the idea of gathering for future needs is practical, but come on...the grasshopper practices his violin. He asks the ants for food and they turn him down. Then they admonish him for not doing what he should do. But...we all need music, too, so they could give him a free lunch at least to thank him for providing background music. But no. Those ants aren’t handing out any love thy neighbor exceptions. They are hard nosed.

Pogo meets the actors in the fable, but Walt Kelly turns things around. The grasshopper is an indolent one, but the ants are the musicians. Pogo and his fellow Okefenokee Swamp critters don’t really work for their food. No, their job is to talk a lot and say witty things. In the usual Pogo story the food often comes from off camera, and as in the story, usually by guile rather than work.

From Pogo Possum #3 (1950):

Number 2481: Merry Christmas from Pappy and Pogo

Christmas Day is a couple of days from now, but everyone has been wishing everyone else good will and happiness, and so will I. Merry Christmas, everybody. 

The Pogo story I have chosen for today is really different for the Dell series of Pogo comic books that came out in the early '50s. For the most part the comic books follow the lead of the daily and Sunday newspaper strip (without the politics), but they do not include human beings, just swamp critters. This story, a take-off on the Traveling Musicians fairy tale, includes human characters.  

Seeing people in a Pogo story strikes me as breaking through the fourth wall. Although jarring to see them, I guess if I can accept Santa Claus, then why not people in a Pogo story?

By Walt Kelly, from Pogo Possum #9 (1952):

Number 2432: Happy Christmas from Albert and Pogo and Pappy

Are you having a nice holiday? Mrs Pappy and I are enjoying our Christmas, and that is our wish for you: enjoy!

Albert and Pogo give some Christmas cheer today from Santa Claus Funnies #254, from 1949. At that time in the late ’40s Pogo and his Okefenokee pals had gotten a newspaper strip. The characters’ familiar appearances had finally been achieved by creator Walt Kelly, after a long period of development.

Just a reminder that there are only two more of Pappy’s postings before I slip off into retirement. I don’t mean to scuttle your otherwise pleasant holiday (depending on how you feel about this blog, that is), because I have a sense of nostalgia, both from Christmases past in my own life, and in the years since this blog has been appearing. I had a chance to show what I have loved all my life...comics!

Having said that, hoist your tankard of wassail; I shall raise my drink and across the miles we will all toast a “Merry Christmas!” together.

Number 2173: Walt Kelly does Hans Christian Andersen’s “Thumbelisa”

Fifty years ago a friend showed me his collection of the original Fairy Tale Parade. I had not seen them before, but as a Pogo fan I loved Walt Kelly. He did the whole 68 page Fairy Tale Parade #1 (1942), with tales designed for children. Even for us old geezers, anything by Kelly is worth reading, producing delight in the reader, young or old.

In the introduction to the 2005 book, The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen by Diana Crone Frank and Jeffrey Frank, this is claimed: “By 1874 Hans Christian Andersen was perhaps better known than any other living writer . . . his work had been widely read since the 1840s . . .” but in “so many interpretations and shoddy translations that the originals had been virtually obliterated.” I have no idea what Andersen would have thought of this interpretation of his story.

Here is another from Fairy Tale Parade, originally posted in 2015. The idea that the emperor has no clothes has lapsed into cliché. Cliché or not, It is still true. Just click on the thumbnail.