[Yoc]

Hi Eric,
I wanted to sincerely thank-you for the wonderful scans of Animal Comics #1!   

Some thoughts on #1, the series and Pogo's evolution...
WOW - what a thrill to see the first Pogo - and wasn't it just amazing how different it looked from what we've all grown to know as a typical Kelly story?
It was Very brief and read more like a typical old animal fable but we can see strong hints of the humour that would soon dominate the feature.  Albert's personality is there but the element of danger was very pronounced and while it was played for laughs (how many times has he eaten another character over the years?) it felt more 'scary'.  Sure I knew it would never happen but Albert felt more like a dangerous threat than what I'm used to seeing.  Physically Albert looks more realist but there's still a cartoony feel to him.
Now to Pogo - WOW was he drawn realistically!  As were all the other animals.  Isn't it fun to watch Kelly slowly evolve Pogo?  Pogo was radically different by Animal #3 and even more different by #5.  We can see the entire strip evolve from the semi-realistically drawn parable into the personality driven humour feature we all know and love from issue to issue.  I would dearly love to see Animal Comics #2 to see the next step in Pogo's evolution!  I can see Pogo slowly starting to morph into his later style by Animal #8 with his nose starting to point up while his more hairy look starting to be toned down.  Note the big change in Pogo between Animal #8 and 9!  By July 1946, 3+ years after Animal #1, Dell liked Pogo enough to give him and Alberta a whole book in their try-out series Dell Four-Coror #105 and another a year later in #148.  Both Four-Colour books show Pogo still hasn't evolved into the cute, more childlike character he would become.  But Albert, Churchy and Owl are all there looking for the most part their later selves.
Seems to me Kelly might have perhaps stumbled across the feature almost by accident.  He might well have just wanted to do a humourous slant on a typical parable but with an American feel to it setting it all in the South.  Who knows?  He might have just picked his character names at random.  I really wonder if he had plans to continue the strip from the start or did he realize he'd stumbled across a winning formula from the start?  Animal #1 was published Dec-Jan 1941-42.  #3 was June 1943.  #5 (Pogo's third app) was October 1943. Kelly was given plenty of time to slowly work on the strip.  He must have felt strongly enough about the idea to try several leads.  The little black boy Bumbazine and Albert were both tried as the lead long before Pogo exerted his spot as the star.  Somewhere between Animal #13 and 15 Pogo got a 'byline' when the named changed from Albert to Albert and Pogo and by #17 Pogo's name has started to be bigger than the former star Albert even as Albert still is getting solo covers in #19!  And all along the Uncle Wiggly feature was getting the star treatment since it started in #2!
Dell must have had great faith in Uncle Wiggly to give it the #1 slot for so long.  Starting with #2 as the cover feature Uncle Wiggly got the lead feature spot until finally in Animal Comics #23 (Oct-November 1946) after almost full three years when Pogo finally bumped Wiggly to the #2 spot.  Pogo himself didn't get a cover appearance until Animal #17!  By then Albert has had five cover shots!  Yes folks, it took Kelly and Dell some time to finally see the power the little ol' possum really had.  Even by Pogo's last story in last issue of Animal #30 (Jan'1948) Pogo is still sharing the spotlight with Albert as the lead.
Things must have looked good to Dell after the fall of Animal Comics and the two Four-Color books in 1946 and '47.  They gave Kelly his own book in starting in Dec. 1949 - almost exactly seven years since the debut of Pogo.  By this time he's very close to his classic look but still not there.  The stories are very humourous though not as political as they would finally become in the newspaper strip some years later.  I think that's to be expected considering their target audiences were so different.  But the new Pogo book might have been on shaky ground as there was only 3 issues published that first year.  Perhaps Kelly's duties on Dells many other books demanded his attention?  But one thing is for sure - by the second year of the book it's up to a bi-monthly and Pogo is hitting it's stride.  Pogo has finally found his 'look' around #6.  And from there it's all history isn't it?

My many thanks to Eric, Ontology and Henry Peters for bringing so many of these rare and expensive books to the public with their scans.  I'm truly thrilled to see them all in one place here on GAC and I hope we get to see more holes filled in these series!

Thanks guys!   
-Yoc

[OtherEric]

You will, the other issues of Animal are all on the way. 

I think a lot of the reason Pogo was such a hit in the papers is that all the early evolution of the character was 'hidden' in the comic book, so once Kelly brought the character to the papers it had made it through the growing pains and burst out ready to go.  Despite the two 4C one shots it wasn't that well known, unlike most comic book to strip moves.

It's interesting to me that, as far as I know, NONE of the stories other than Pogo in the Animal 1 were continued.  (I haven't seen 2 yet.)  So it's possible Pogo was created as a one-shot that for some reason stuck around.  Which boggles the mind that we may have been that close to never seeing anything else.

It's worth noting that Pogo did NOT get his own ongoing series until after the newspaper strip had started.  The one-shots, yes, but not the ongoing.  And it's amazing that Kelly, even if using assistants, kept doing so much work on the comic book himself after the strip was the going concern.  (If you're interested in the history of Pogo, I recommend both Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years With Pogo and Pogo Files for Pogophiles.  As far as I know, the first is long out of print but one of the more common of the old books.  The second you can still order.)

Pogo appeared in issue 2 as well, #5 was his fourth appearance.  And Albert's fifth; Our Gang 6 has an Albert & Bumbazine story but Pogo doesn't show in it; it came out between Animal 3 and 4.

And include JonTheScanner in your list of people to thank, he's provided some of my fill pages and covers.  More importantly, he's the scanner of 3 of the 4 issues still to come.  And who did the Animal 22 scan?  That's the only one I don't know who the scanner was.

And you're welcome; I'm very glad I was able to share such great books with people.  They deserve to be seen; for all that Animal was a very inconsistent and random book there are a LOT of good stories in them, and not just Kelly.

[Yoc]

Hi Eric,
Sorry, I have no credit for Animal 22 or 23.  Wish I could help.
And of course - my thanks to Jon for these Animal books as well as countless other books he's shared over the years!!

I believe my Dad owns 'Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years' but not the later book.  I should be re-reading them now that I'm older and can appreciate the political humout more now.

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

Well, I can help on the Animal 23 credit.  That one was mine. :-)

Pogo is always worth re-reading.  I just hope they get the fantagraphics collections going soon; last I heard they were still trying to find some of the Sundays for the first book.

[JonTheScanner]

Looking at Animal #22 I'd guess it's possibly my scan.  It has dimensions and editing that look like mine, and it's files have an old DOS 8.3 name format which I still use on most my scans.  I also definitely own the comic.  I don't know why I'd have scanned just one issue of Animal though.

In any case #10 and 29 have been scanned and sent to AgentUup for editing. He'll also be doing #2 and HP's scan of #4.