I can't think of the last item I got in the mail that made me as happy as what I received yesterday: A printed copy of Volume 4 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips.
This book would make anyone happy since it's packed with two years worth of what a lot of us think is the best newspaper strip ever done — Walt Kelly's Pogo. Not only that but the two years are 1955 and 1956 when Mr. Kelly had truly hit his stride and was doing the kind of work that made it and him famous. But I have a special reason to be delighted…
As most of you know, I got involved in this series because I was involved with Walt Kelly's wonderful daughter Carolyn and she was involved in this series. Matter of fact, she was its co-editor and designer and over-all Quality Control Martinet…and I mean that in only a good way. No one else supervising a series of books reprinting a newspaper strip could possibly care about its excellence more than she cared about preserving and presenting her father's magnum opus.
It was not easy to meet the goals she set for the series. Good quality source material was not available for some of the early strips so Carolyn painstakingly restored some medium-quality source material into good source material, retouching and cleaning up the strips by hand and/or Photoshop. You would not believe how many hours she spent doing that. That delayed the books. Then her co-editor Kim Thompson began battling the cancer that took his life in 2013. That delayed the books. Then Carolyn herself began battling the cancer that took her life earlier this year. That really delayed the books.
One of the many ways I knew we were going to lose her was that she began asking me, "If I don't make it, will you make sure the Pogo series is completed, just the way we planned it?" I assured her several times it would be and I have stepped into her role as co-editor to make sure that happens. The long-delayed Volume Four is now printed and Volume Five is on schedule. In fact, Volume Five is about 80% complete — with a foreword by Jake Tapper.
Volume Four contains two years of strips — dailies and Sundays with the Sundays in color — as well as historical material, a little tribute to Carolyn and a foreword by Neil Gaiman. At the moment, Amazon is giving January 9, 2018 as its release date but since I have an actual, real printed-and-bounded copy to my left, it should be out through them before that. It takes a few weeks for all the copies to arrive in this country from the overseas printer and then the crates have to clear Customs…but before Christmas seems highly possible.
"How do I get a copy?" I hear you ask. This link will allow you to pre-order one from Amazon — and since I have my copy, it shouldn't be that long before you have yours.
But, as they say in infomercials, wait! There's more! If you didn't get Volume 3 or maybe even if you did, you can get Volume 3 and Volume 4 in a lovely boxed-set with a slipcase that holds both of them. Amazon says they'll be delivered at the end of March but I don't believe that. Why? Because I didn't just receive my copy of 4 yesterday as a standalone. It came as part of my lovely boxed-set of Volume 3 and 4. I've got one! The boxes were made at the same time as Volume 4 and an additional pressing of Volume 3. Here's a link to order the boxed set — and I should mention that the box looks different from the illustration there.
And I should also tell you that at this moment — and, knowing Amazon, maybe not for long — you can get the boxed set of Volumes 1 and 2 at this link for about the price of one volume. If you're thinking of collecting this series, this would be a great way to start.
I was a fan of Pogo long before I ever met Carolyn, even before I could "get" two-thirds of the jokes in it. Fortunately, there were enough that even a third was more than enough. I loved it and I wished someone would do the series I now find myself co-editing with Eric Reynolds. If you want to say Peanuts was the greatest strip ever or that Krazy Kat was or Li'l Abner or the Elzie Segar Thimble Theater (aka Popeye), I'll admit they're all wonderful too and we won't have much of an argument. But I'll still be right.