Playing Possum

A writer by the name of Hal Higdon has a rather nice overview of Walt Kelly and his Pogo strip, written for the CFA/APA. (The Comic and Fantasy Art Amateur Press Association (CFA/APA) is, as far as I can determine, a small band of comic and fantasy art collectors who write about their hobby online.) In his article, Mr. Higdon makes the bold claim that Kelly's Pogo is the best funny-animal comic strip of all time. He later, in posing the question, "what comic strip of past or present history can match Kelly's Pogo -- or even come close?", drops the "funny-animal" qualifier and seems ready to take on all comers.

In this corner, from the Okeefenokee Swamp ...

As far as I can tell, for the most part Mr. Higdon applies two criteria in his match-up. The first appears to be an overall sense of humor, by which he eliminates all but a very few contenders. First among the survivors is George Herriman's Krazy Kat -- another classic frequently called the Best Comic Ever by fans, historians, and Amazon.com. But Higdon dismisses the work of Herriman because "he can't match Kelly's skill with a brush." Higdon goes on: "Neither could Berke Breathed, creator of Bloom County, a strip that I might concede matched Pogo in the humor category."

He continues: "When it comes to combining both art and gags, Bill Watterson probably comes closest to Kelly". Which begs the question, just how does Mr. Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes match up to Kelly's Pogo? Higdon, for his part, is too quick to dismiss the question on dubious grounds, saying, "at least one professional cartoonist I interviewed recently scoffed at Watterson, claiming Calvin & Hobbes was a Pogo knock-off". But I believe Mr. Watterson's work deserves a bit more consideration.

Aaaaand in this corner ...


On the website Progressive Boink, three guys named Jon, Bill, and Nick make the case that Calvin & Hobbes is the Best Comic Ever, in an article which begins thus:

Hundreds of comic strips have been published in newspapers.The majority are terrible, and almost all the rest are mediocre. There have been maybe four or five good comic strips in the history of the world. So saying that Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip ever doesn't really hold a lot of weight.

They go on to explain that Bill Watterson produced the only glimer of quality in an industry "characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a Family Circus kid misunderstanding the meaning of a word, or an overweight father playing golf while telling jokes such as I LIKE GOLF and GOLF IS HARD."

If you can get past that opening, the guys do seem to have a decent sense of what makes a comic strip good. They point to the full range of humor, from absurd to deadpan, and the way Watterson often uses his strip for social commentary. They laud both his lack of sentimentality and his more heartwarming storylines. They praise his considerable artistic talent, and in the creative layout of his later Sunday comics. The problem with their premise is the basic underlying fallacy that no other feature in the history of newspaper comics has ever demonstrated these qualities. Still, it may be worth asking the question: what other comic has combined all these qualities?


The Face-Off

In some ways, Kelly and Watterson seem to be a study in opposites. Watterson worked with a very few characters while Kelly employed an extensive cast. Watterson liked to wax philosophical where Kelly preferred vaudeville and slapstick. Both were first-rate artists, though Watterson was more prone to minimalism while Kelly would fill his panels to bursting. Watterson, though, should get the artistic edge here for the incredible creativity and range of styles he employed.

Kelly, on the other hand, gets high marks for writing. I don't think any other daily comic strip artist can match his skill with extended, multi-layered narrative. He had a way of involving his many characters in several disparate storylines, then letting them converge and ricochet and merge into a great freewheeling farce. Just check out the G.O. Fizzicle Pogo collection, now being posted at the Official Pogo Website. Watterson's narratives had a similar creative abandon, but never reached the scope and breadth of Kelly's works.


A Political Animal

Hal Higdon, in his invitation to challenge Pogo for its Best Ever title, asserts, "...all I need to do is add one category to assure that those candidates will fall short: Political Relevance." And he's right. Only a few comics, such as Bloom County or Doonesbury, can approach Pogo in the political arena. Watterson never dealt directly with politics in Calvin & Hobbes, though he did maintain what I would call Social Relevance. His social satire could be sharp and on point, and general enough that it rings as true today as when he first wrote it.

This, I think, is both an advantage and a disadvantage for Watterson. Twenty or thirty years from now, the kid who comes across a Calvin & Hobbes collection won't have to go through as much historical research as he would for a Doonesbury collection (or as I did, to find out what Pogo's "Geophysical Year" was all about). Part of what makes a comic great is how it presents the world in an altered, yet strangely familiar, view. C&H should age well in that regard.

Pogo, on the other hand, was never shy about bringing current events and politics into its funhouse-mirror view of the world. Kelly was often able to rouse and upset people with his sharp satirical attacks. I would argue that any such reaction should be seen as the hallmark of a great satirical comic: if it doesn't upset someone, it's not doing its job. And in this, Kelly comes out at the top.

But does that make Pogo, indeed, the Best Comic Ever? I don't know. I'd certainly encourage everyone to check out two, at least, of the very best comics at http://www.pogopossum.com/ and www.mycomicspage.com/feature/calvinandhobbes . Then decide for yourself.