Walt Kelly started his career at age 13 in Connecticut as a cartoonist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he movedto Los Angeles and joined the Walt Disney Studio, where heworked on classic animated films, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Rather than take sides in a bitter labor strike, hemoved back east in 1941 and began drawing comic books. It was during this time that Kelly created Pogo Possum. The character first appeared in Animal Comics as a secondaryplayer in the “Albert the Alligator” feature. It didn’t take long until “Pogo” became the comic’s leading character. After WWII, Kelly became artistic director at the New York Star, where he turned Pogo into a daily strip. By late 1949, Pogo appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Until his death in 1973, Kelly produced a feature that has become widelycherished among casual readers and aficionados alike. Kelly blended nonsense language, poetry, and political and social satire to make Pogo an essential contribution toAmerican “intellectual” comics. As the strip progressed, it became a hilarious platform for Kelly’s scathing politicalviews in which he skewered national bogeymen like J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and RichardNixon. Kelly started when newspaper strips shied away from politics — Pogo was ahead of its time and ahead of laterstrips (such as Doonesbury and The Boondocks) that tackled political issues. Our first volume reprints approximately the first two years of Pogo — dailies and (for the first time) full-color Sundays. This first volume also introduces such enduring supporting characters as Porkypine, Churchy LaFemme, BeauregardBugleboy, Seminole Sam, Howland Owl, and many others. And for Christmas, 1949, Kelly started his tradition of regaling his readers with his infamously and gloriously mangled Christmas carols. Special features in this sumptuous premiere volume (the first of twelve), which is produced with the full cooperation ofKelly’s heirs, include an extensive biographical introduction by Kelly biographer Steve Thompson, a section explainingsome of the more obscure current references, and more.