Volume 4 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips has stopped being a pre-order at Amazon. In fact, they've been shipping copies for a few days now, plus I've heard from folks who got copies more than a week ago — i.e., last year — from other sources. I am so, so happy to have this out. I will be so, so happy to see Volume 5 emerge, maybe in time for Comic-Con International in July. It will have an introduction by Jake Tapper, taking a brief respite from his current profession of swatting down White House factotums.
I think Walt Kelly's Pogo is the greatest comic strip ever done…and I thought that long before I became (cough!) involved with Mr. Kelly's daughter. I even have the original art to a Pogo Sunday page framed and hanging in my kitchen, right next to a framed Peanuts Sunday page that Charles Schulz gave me. I don't recall where I got the Pogo page but I probably paid good money for it, long before I met Carolyn. I'm going to tell you a little story about it but first, we have to break for this brief commercial message…
Volume 4 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips contains two whole years — 1955 and 1956 — of daily and Sunday Pogo comic strips…with the Sundays printed in color for the first time in any English language reprint collection. There's also historical material, a little tribute to my love Carolyn and a foreword by Neil Gaiman. This link will allow you to order one from Amazon — which at this moment has shipped out so many that they're temporarily out of stock. But order anyway. It won't be long.
You can also order a lovely boxed-set of Volume 3 and 4 via this link or order the boxed set of Volumes 1 and 2 at this link for about the price of one volume. If you care about great comic art, these books are must-haves. And now, back to you, Mark…
Thank you, me. As you may know, Carolyn was my "companion" (sounds classier than "lady friend") for about twenty years. Ah, I remember our first real date…
I took her to a great Japanese restaurant that was so great, it went out of business a week later. Then we went back to my house where a quick tour has been known to scare off other women. Of course, I showed her the framed Sunday page by her father. We were standing in front of it when the following occurred…
She had noticed some books I have about magic and she asked me if I did any tricks. I told her I don't perform often but, yes, I have a few feats I can do with a deck of cards. They do not cause Copperfield to sweat the competition but they can astound the easily-astounded. She insisted I do one for her so I grabbed up a deck.
(Before I forget: Don't read this story if you're viewing this site on a cell phone. You're going to need a big computer monitor to get the punchline.)
Magicians aren't supposed to reveal how a trick is done but I think it's okay to reveal this one if I don't tell you what the trick is. It involves the Queen of Diamonds. I write "Queen of Diamonds" on a slip of paper, fold it up and hand it to (in this case) Carolyn to hold without looking at it. She has no idea what I've written. Then I shuffle the cards and do some fancy moves which I don't think I can do any more…then I have Carolyn pick a card, seemingly at random. I say "seemingly" because while she may think she has a free choice of any card, I have tricked her into selecting the Queen of Diamonds.
Then, as usually performed, there's some mumbo-jumbo and stalling and drawing it out but I finally say to her, "All right. You could have picked any card [a lie] and you picked the Queen of Diamonds! Now, open that slip of paper I handed you and tell me what it says!" She opens the paper, sees that it says "Queen of Diamonds" and she is amazed and impressed. At least, that's the way it usually works. This particular time, it went like this…
I said, "Now, I'm going to have you pick a card —" and before I could shuffle the deck and force the Queen of Diamonds on her, she just blurted out, "Queen of Diamonds!" This happens to every magician once in a while. Every so often, your audience inadvertently does your trick for you and doesn't realize it. I immediately told Carolyn to open the folded paper and see what I'd written on it, which she did. Upon finding the name of the card she'd thought of ten seconds before, she shrieked and ran out of the room in a panic.
I started to run after her but then my eyes fell for some reason on the Pogo strip on the wall — which was right behind her as I'd performed the trick. I laughed, went and got her and showed her what happened on that Pogo page. Life doesn't always imitate art but it nearly always can replicate a good comic strip.
