The Pogo Special Birthday Special

Pogo
Pogo daily strip from Earth Day, 1971
Author(s)	Walt Kelly
Current status / schedule	Concluded
Launch date	October 4, 1948 (as a newspaper strip)
End date	July 20, 1975
Syndicate(s)	Post-Hall Syndicate
Publisher(s)	Simon & Schuster, Fantagraphics Books, Gregg Press, Eclipse Comics, Spring Hollow Books
Genre(s)	Humor, Satire, Politics

Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly (1913–1973) and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate. Set in the Okefenokee Swamp of the southeastern United States, the strip often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of its anthropomorphic funny animal characters.

Pogo combined both sophisticated wit and slapstick physical comedy in a heady mix of allegory, Irish poetry, literary whimsy, puns and wordplay, lushly detailed artwork and broad burlesque humor. The same series of strips can be enjoyed on different levels by both young children and savvy adults. The strip earned Kelly a Reuben Award in 1951.

Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 25, 1913. His family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he was only two. He went to California at age 22 to work on Donald Duck cartoons at Walt Disney Studios in 1935. He stayed until the animators' strike in 1941 as an animator on The Nifty Nineties, The Little Whirlwind, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon. Kelly then worked for Dell Comics, a division of Western Publishing of Racine, Wisconsin.