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Eighty years of blue-eyed love with Pogo
According comic book historians who keep track of these things,
Animal comics #1 from Dell Publishing was released 80 years ago today.
His claim to fame is that the comic featured the debut
of Pogo Possum and Albert the alligator by Walt Kelly.
The occupants of Okefenokee are not born fully formed,
their presentation in appearance and style would evolve.
[The evolution would happen so quickly that the authorship of that first story is uncertain:
“‘Albert Takes the Cake’ is easily imaginable as a children’s picture book. so much so that it is open to question how much of that first story is Walt Kelly’s and how much is [editor] That of Oskar Lebeck. “Albert Takes the Cake” bears little resemblance to the stories with Albert and Pogo that follow, which show all the signs of being entirely Kelly’s work. Frank Thomas explained how Lebeck “usually sparked off the original idea for the feature” before handing it over to one of his artist-writers; Gaylord Dubois, who wrote for Lebeck but did not draw, spoke of such a process when he and Lebeck collaborated on children’s fiction. The genesis of ‘Albert Takes the Cake’ may have been similar.
– Michel Barrière, funny books (Univ. of California Press, 2015) page 70]
But here, from 1942, it’s “Albert Takes the Cake” by Walt Kelly.
These pages are taken from Comic More website where Animal Comics #1 – #30 are available, allowing us to read the progression of Pogo and Albert and his companions up to 1947.
Pogo would appear, mostly fully formed, in comic book form October 4, 1948.
Animal Comics #1 - 30 have been determined to be public domain. Otherwise ... Pogo Possum and Albert the Alligator are © The Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.
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