Impollutable Pogo, by Walt Kelly

We ran across this book while moving things from my mother’s house a couple weeks ago. I bet you thought I was going to say, “while shelving books in the library,” didn’t you? I remember this book from many years ago, but apparently not as long ago as I thought, because this Pocket Book was published in 1976, the year I graduated from high school. But I do remember reading it.

Walt Kelly was a genius, in my opinion. The antics of Pogo and company are outright hilarious. Pogo is a possum, and cavorts with his friends, Albert the alligator, Churchill La Femme the turtle, Owl, Porcupine, Sarcophagus the buzzard, Deacon (I’m not sure what he is), and others. There’s a bear who appears in this book as a newcomer, who takes a major role in one of the plot lines in this book.

Oh, and for anyone not old enough to know, Pogo was a comic strip, which I read religiously on the “funny page” of the newspaper.

One of the plot lines in this book is that Owl and Churchy are planning a demonstration of sorts to get people to stop breathing, because they have decided that breathing is the main cause of air pollution. At one point, one of them is open to the idea of only half of breathing, either in or out, opining that if people would simply stop breathing out (thereby breathing poison into the atmosphere), that would solve the problem.

They enlist the help of the three bats (nameless, as far as I can remember), who plan to have a seance and put it on “teevee,” interviewing dead people, who, of course, are “non-breathers.”

The other plot line involves Churchy and Owl somehow getting thrown in jail by the bear and Sarcophagus, “on suspicion.” A trial is planned, but only to make their guilt official. They plan to give them a “fair trial” before finding them guilty. The interesting thing is that the bear, Owl, and Churchy all show up at Sarcophagus’s “digs” at the same time. But at some point, the bear convinces Sarcophagus that Owl and Churchy should be locked up, because “they look as if they could develop into lawbreakers.” After throwing wigs on them, they are given twenty years each “on suspicion,” and the bear says, “Get ’em into jail before they do something.”

The hilarity goes on and on. Churchy is deathly afraid of Friday the 13th, to the point that every month has one. It just falls on a different day each month. For example, as I am writing this in June of 2022, he would say that “Friday the 13th falls on Monday this month!”

One of the best lines in the book, though comes when Pogo and porcupine are out walking, trying to get to Sarcophagus’s digs (everyone eventually winds up there). They turn and look back in the direction from which they came and the porcupine says, “Looking back on things, the view always improves.”

I love the title of the last chapter of the book, “Alls Well that Ends.” The whole crew (I don’t see the bear, however) winds up sitting around a picnic table. Nothing has been resolved, except that Churchy and Owl have managed to escape the jail cell, but they are having a grand ol’ time. Albert is still upset about pollution, and says (as he tosses his used cigar into the lemonade), “All them characters what dumps anything anywhere . . . THEY IS ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE!” After which porcupine proudly declares the line that Pogo may be most famous for.

“We have met the enemy and he is US!”

It’s great fun. If you can manage to get your hands on a copy of this book, check it out. I feel relatively sure that there are a number of made-up words included in Sarcophagus’s grand legal speech preceding the “trial” of Churchy and Owl.

TTFN, y’all!

Strange Planet and Stranger Planet, by Nathan Pyle

I decided to combine these two into one blog entry, as the reviews of them would have been pretty much identical. I have been reading Nathan Pyle’s comics on Facebook for a while, now, and was delighted to discover that the Hurst Public Library has two graphic novel collections of his work. There might be more, but I discovered these during my shelving adventures last Tuesday night.

They were not, of course, disappointing. I remember seeing a lot of the represented comics before, but some were new to me. In these comics, Mr. Pyle finds a way to re-phrase some of our most common human experiences, as though aliens were experiencing them. Examples: Refrigerator is called “sustenance preserver;” eating vegetables is referred to as “ingesting leaves;” cats are called “vibrating creatures;” and kissing is referred to as “mouthpushing.”

Various traditions are tackled, such as a wedding (called “cohesion”) in the second volume, and Halloween, in which the phrase “trick or treat” is rendered, “Provide a sweet or face mild harassment.” A penalty is called in a sports event, for “shoving after shove time was over.” Another sporting event is referred to as “recreational face-striking, and then there is a celebration of “collective survival” on “New Revolution’s day.”

Side note: While perusing Nathan’s Facebook page, I noticed a simple phrase in his info. “I follow Jesus.” That makes me very happy.

I’ll share two of my favorites here. The first one involves the vibrating creature and its love for little boxes. However, as the scene pans out, it seems that we are not so different from our vibrating creatures.

And how could I not love this one about libraries, structures filled with texts, free for us to simply take?

TTFN y’all!!