POGO

from Fancyclopedia 2

A handsome young opossum, inhabiting the Okefenokee swamp and various comic strips, not to mention the Simon and Schuster books. This Pogo, you understand, is the one created by Walt Kelly, no relation to the Pogo which was the fan-name of Mary Corrine Gray about 1942-45 and figured in LASFS affairs. The earliest full reference to him in the fan press which your editors have been able to track down was in Betsy and Ed Curtis' THE CRICKET, June '49, which quoted Kelly on the masthead ("You plays cricket, drinks tea, and lifs the pinky when you holds the cup...") and remarked inside on the editors' large collection of Pogo strips and other work by Kelly, such as his political cartoons from the New York Star. (The Curtises later got a place in the strip, as "Uncle Regular Curtis", the mail-carrying duck.) The Insurgents had a passing mention in a WILD HAIR (Feb '49) advertising for stuff for Burbee's collection, but not till the rise of Lee Hoffman Fandom in 1950-51 was Pogo-addiction epidemic in fandom. Thelma Kelly defended the craze: "Pogo is not merely a comic book; it is a periodic lesson in manners and relationships and carries into our lives a soft and living humor not based on pratfalls and disparagement." The fad passed toward the end of 1954 and nothing has quite replaced it; when selbstsogenannt 7th Fandom was rampant, part of their reaction was against Pogo, impelling A BAS to remark: "Perhaps Mad Comics have replaced Pogo among the Birdbaths because they are pretty obvious even to the meagre mind, whereas Pogo requires a modicum of intelligence and perspicacity". But your d'Alembert suspects Kelly's descent into political moralizing to have done most of the dirty work.

Pogoisms, or Swamptalk, are the things critturs say in the Okefenokee; quotes like these are much favored by fans for interlineations: "A atom bomb can put everythin' all over nowhere -- nothin' to sweep up!" "Don't get drug down by life -- it ain't nohow permanent." Some able dialect- specialist should try to classify it; the difference from standard Dixie and Negro dialect is perceptible, tho not marked.