Volume 6 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips has been out for about a month, slowly dribbling into comic book shops everywhere as copies — apparently delivered by Churchy the Turtle — made their way to retailers. I think Joe Ferrara's store in Santa Cruz got some in and sold out immediately a month ago today. But within two or three days, they should be to every dealer that ordered 'em.
Amazon got them in in dribs and drabs and has been quietly filling mail orders in an order I do not pretend to understand. But they're now promising that if you order right now, your copy will ship in 1-2 days. So order right now.
I almost never blow my own horn on this blog about my work but I'm just co-editor of these books. It's not my work that makes 'em wonderful. Long before I met his daughter, I was telling people that Walt Kelly was my favorite cartoonist and I was hardly alone in this choice of favorite cartoonists. On the walls of one room of my house, I have framed originals of Pogo, Peanuts and Krazy Kat. If I'd ever come across a good Sunday Popeye by Elzie Segar that I could afford, it would join them.
The strips in this volume cover the years 1959 and 1960 so, as I noted in an earlier plug, Mr. Kelly had plenty of world-changing topics in the newspaper to work with. Pogo and his merry mob addressed many of them but the strip was also delicious when Walt was just being silly for silly's sake.
This volume is subtitled Clean as a Weasel and it features a foreword by Jim "Garfield" Davis plus other extras. The titles come from a list we found in Kelly's own handwriting. Most are phrases he'd used in the strip at least once and he was intending to use them as titles for some sort of series of "Best of Pogo" reprints in small paperbacks…I think. The next of our volumes, Pockets Full of Pie, will be in stores well before the end of 2020.