Stripper's Guide

How can Pogo be an obscurity of the day? When it's the ill-starred revival of 1989-1993 (officially titled Walt Kelly's Pogo), that's how. You'd think that the ill-advised continuation of the original strip after Walt Kelly's death in the 70s would have been lesson enough that newspaper readers insisted that their beloved Pogo be the product of Walt Kelly's fertile imagination, but obviously it wasn't.

It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. Writer Larry Doyle (later a writer for The Simpsons TV show) was able to give the strip the classic Kelly flavor, and artist Neal Sternecky was a more than capable cartoonist. Both creators understood that the Pogo storylines had to be somewhat simplified for the taste of the current generation of newspaper readers (or at least so syndicate editors preached), and that the art had to be simplified for today's miniscule printing sizes. Given those strictures they did an admirable job of adapting Walt Kelly's classic to a new generation.

What Doyle and Sternecky did to modernize the strip, though, was anathema to fans of the Walt Kelly original. The belly-aching began immediately on the new strip's much-heralded appearance. The two creators were demonized by many old-time fans. Worse, in trying to appeal to old fans the creators did a poor job of introducing the strip to a younger generation that had never seen Pogo, and the die was cast. No one, old fan or new, was willing to give the revival much of a chance.

I'm afraid I don't know the inside story of the strip's creative changes, so I can only say that Larry Doyle was the first creator to jump ship in February 1991, but not whether he got a better offer elsewhere or just simply got tired of hearing all the carping. Neal Sternecky then took over the writing duties for another year before he too bailed out. Then it was up to Peter and Carolyn Kelly, both children of Walt, to carry the torch. They gave up the Sunday in favor of reprints of the original strip (with a few exceptions, see below), but continued the daily. Then in mid-1993 Peter Kelly also dropped out and Michael Lewis wrote for awhile before Carolyn took over all the duties. Finally the foundering strip was put out of its misery in November 1993.

Here are the credits as near as I can figure them out. This list is an adaptation of a rather confusing rundown that appeared in the Kelly fan publication The Fort Mudge Most:

Sunday Art:
Neal Sternecky 1/8/89 - 3/22/92
Walt Kelly reprints 3/29/92 - 11/15/92
Carolyn Kelly 11/22/92 - 12/27/92
Walt Kelly reprints 1/3/93 - 6/27/93
Carolyn Kelly 7/4/93 - 10/10/93
Sternecky reprints 10/17/93 - 11/28/93

Daily Art:
Neal Sternecky 1/9/89 - 3/21/92
Carolyn Kelly 3/23/92 - 10/2/93
Sternecky reprints 10/4/93 - 11/27/93

Sunday Scripts:
Larry Doyle 1/8/89 - 2/24/91
Neal Sternecky 3/3/91 - 3/22/92
Walt Kelly reprints 3/29/92 - 11/15/92
Peter Kelly 11/22/92 - 12/27/92
Walt Kelly reprints 1/3/93 - 6/27/93
Peter Kelly 7/4/93 - 7/18/93
Michael Lewis 7/25/93 - 10/3/93
Carolyn Kelly 10/10/93
Doyle reprints 10/17/93 - 10/31/93
Sternecky reprints 11/7/93 - 11/28/93

Daily Scripts:
Larry Doyle 1/9/89 - 2/23/91
Neal Sternecky 2/25/91 - 3/21/92
Peter Kelly 3/23/92 - 9/11/93
Michael Lewis 9/13/93 - 9/18/93
Peter Kelly 9/20/93 - 10/2/93
Sternecky reprints 10/4/93 - 11/27/93

What a shame that Doyle and Sternecky were haunted by the ghost of Walt Kelly. There was more than enough creative horsepower in this fine team to create a modern classic. But they were doomed from the start to live in the shadow of a master. Rather than castigate them for failing to fill the shoes of a giant perhaps we should better ask why they were foolish enough to take on the impossible task in the first place.

NOTE: although the paper that printed the samples above was giving credit to Doyle and Sternecky, the strip by this time was Sternecky's alone.

Labels: Obscurities