If in a room of comic strip historians, you proclaimed that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the best newspaper comic of all time, no one would call the sanitarium to come cart you away. Not everyone would agree, of course. Some would argue that Pogo was the second best or the third…but few would place it outside the Top Ten and no one would think you'd lost your taste or marbles. Mr. Kelly was a genius not only at drawing wonderful, mesmerizing critters but at putting them in fascinating situations and filling their word balloons with plain, old-fashioned brilliance. The "We have met the enemy…" line is his most quoted but he was that good, that sharp almost every week…for around 9,687 strips, daily and Sunday.
(Don't take those numbers as exact. For one thing, I did the math and mine is always a bit questionable. For another, I used the dates that the original Pogo strip ran and Kelly didn't do the last few years, owing to his having passed away.)
If you want a precise count, here's what you'll have to do. Fantagraphics Books, the folks who bring you those superb Peanuts reprints, are soon to bring you Pogo with the same loving care and format. Buy the books — there'll be twelve (or so) volumes in hardcover in the coming years — and when they get to the end, count up the strips. It'll be somewhere over 9,000 and they'll all be jes' wonderful with the presentation they deserve. Walt's daughter Carolyn is keeping an eye on everything and protecting the family jewels.
Here's the official announcement. Above is the not-final cover for the first one, expertly art-directed by Jeff "Bone" Smith. We are all quite happy about this.