lol, i like it

Makes sense

Verra cute! Love those authentic Kelly-ish textures.

Still one of my all time favorites you did of Hepsi.

Pogo is rather reluctant to commit.

One wonders why.

I guess he could be gay. Which just leaves the field open for me to pitch some woo at Heppie.

I do remember a heart-shaped panel with Pogo and Porkypine looking at each other longingly in a Pogo strip reprint book.

Not that I want to start rumors or anything...

All those needles! Wouldn't there have been a risk of AIDS?

Pogo likes to hang around Albert Alligator and that second hand see-gar smoke.

That and the porcupine squeeze...

The possum just lives for danger.

It's funny how sexually segregated the Swamp was - aside from Miz Beaver and Ma'mzelle, you hardly ever saw any of the other except during times of political crisis or whatever.

There weren't many girls in the Pogo universe at all. Occasionally you saw a mother of some brood of bunnies or bugs, and they'd just be a bunny or a bug with an old time bonnet, or possibly an apron to go with it. It was a feminine world only to the extent it was maternal. But that wasn't too unusual with a lot of comics or animated cartoons. The Betty Boops and Little Red Riding Hoods are so memorable, I suppose, because they were unusual enough to really stand out.

I'd have expected she'd just douche.

I don't think that would help with that rotting fruit smell skunks have hanging around them unless bathed daily.

Of course, the real reason for Miz Beaver's consternation is that she doesn't want to tell Hepzibah those jugs contain her booze.

All is not lost! The persistent smell of alcohol will draw swamp boys for smiles, and the fumes may lower the Mamzelle's inhibitions.

That would do it, alright. 'Course, either her shine is called "Channel no.5"or she just uses those convenient jugs of Paris' best that are discarded outside the Gen'rl Store all the time. Could be she likes that little nip, the taste of wood alcohol and whale blubber give the shine.

Well, when I made the comment, I was thinking the latter. But this is Pogo, and this is the Okeefenokee. I would totally not be surprised if they sell hangman in earthen jugs with 'Chanel No. 5' on them, thinking they were copying champagne.

Heck, aside from the question of if Kelly would introduce alcohol, isn't that MORE in keeping with the characters, the swamp, and how they do things, than Hepzibah being able to buy real Chanel?

...frankly, I could totally see Miz Beaver making her own booze in old perfume bottles for the taste, too. You know, Miz Beaver is the cosmopolitan and bohemian of the swamp, with her jaded, sophisticated tastes from a lifetime of hard playing.

Ol' Miz Beaver is doubtless the measure of most of the folk in the Okeefenokee. I always thought Hepzibah was more sophisticated though. She didn't get that accent from Georgia or Florida! I pictured her as settling down with kin in the swamp, but having spend her youth in Paris. Then again, maybe she was a swamp rat from New Arlins.

Very true, but I would counter that Hepzibah's level of sophistication is unimportant. Because she's from a world where name brand perfumes are sold in tiny crystal bottles and plates are made out of thin porcelain, nobody understands what the Hell she's talking about at any time, and she doesn't understand anything that's going on around her and just accepts that it must be normal.

I mean, she could be a FRENCH hick. One would assume they have ignorant backwaters in France. But it hardly seems necessary. And so much of her personality is explained by her thinking 'Ah. Een Amaireeca, zey do not *ave* clozing shops! Be strong, Hepzibah. Vous can adapts!'

Much of the humour of Ma'm'zelle doubtless comes from just that she's a foreigner, and foreigners don't understand familiar American things.

In France there's a strong sense that anyone who isn't from Paris is a hick. Large cities like Lyons or Marseilles are alright in their own way, but lack culture. (Sort of like comparing Milwaukee or Columbus to New York.) And yet the French also yearn to return to "la boue" -- literally, "the mud." The impressionists caught a lot of the sentiment on canvas when they painted beautiful countrysides in the south of France, with picturesque mountains, basets of fresh vegetables and fruit on rustic benches, bottles of local vintages, aromatic cheeses and buxom country lasses cutting them. But no Parisian could have stood it for more than a week before they'd hanker for a night at the opera, or a demi-tasse of genuine French roast coffee, or a stroll by the Seinne to kibbutz at the painters.

So was Ma'm'zelle from some lesser center of civilization rather than Gay Paree, or even from the countryside? It's hard to say. She isn't much of a proletarian either, so I instinctively feel it rules out Rouen, Toulouse, Dijon, or Bordeaux. Perhaps she is from small town France in Normandy, or some non-touristy corner of the Rivierra. That would make her a hick in France, but still pretty urbane for Georgia.

God I love bad software! Whatever runs FA dropped a line from my reply above. I said that Ma'm'zelle wasn't much of a snob, so I doubted she wsa Parisian, and, lo and behold, FA drops it out!

She could be from around Toulouse; I've always thought that was considered the official French redneck epicenter.

I suppose we could always La Trek around toulouse to find out.

Just like the Spanish looked askance at Barcelona. And the French had a saying "Never trust a Gascon". The regions mentioned were a mixing pot of races; Spanish, French, mongol, mongrel, subhumans, whatever. Lepers and subhumans were said to come from these regions, and heretics as well. "Kill ALL the people . God will sort them out !" said the Pope once.

whatever shopping these swampoids do, app. is at Fort Mudge, but a Pogo researcher admitted that it's an old uninhabited ruin and worn by the elements. Mz.Beavair has also been to Paris - Kentucky.

Yep! That works everytime! Greatly done pic! Sweet details!

Now all it need is her splashing in it for a few sec. Then it will really have a kick to it! ^v^

Heh...reminds me of a Pogo strip back in the late 1980s (done by Doyle & Sternecky) in which Pogo, Porkypine, and Beauregard raced to Hepzibah's house trying to be the first to ask her out for Valentine's Day. By the time they arrived, they had become so sweaty that their collective stench repulsed her. It occurred to me later on that they must have been pretty bad to have repulsed la mouffette francaise ;)

They kept trying to bring back Pogo, but the times had just changed too much. You almost couldn't recreate the straight-laced 50's, when the least political satire shocked people. Not even Pogo and Ma'm'zelle and Porky doing a menage a trois wouldn't have shocked *all* the readers in the 70's... The other thing that was the hillbilly/southern cracker genre was fading from popular culture. By the time Walt Kelly died, genuine po' white sothern folk were turning into trailor trash. Knittng bees were being replaced by television WWW wrestling. And white lightning lost its market share to Coors. L'il Abner today would be regarded as so off-the-wall it might as well be about Martians.

I'm old enough to remember that when I was a little shaver my folks drove a couple of times from Toronto to Miami. We saw shacks along the highway inhabited by genuine white trash, and once I pissed in a segregated black only bathroom, behind a gas station. I had never heard of such a thing back in Toronto, and wandered it without looking at the sign. Maybe some things *are* best forgotten.



I can't picture the original strip referring to body odour either. Making fun of Spiro Agnew was one thing, but mentioning B.O. was going too far!

The old Solid South broke up and started voting Republican.

I recall getting on an older city bus here some time in the late 70s, and happened to notice a place obout halfway down where an oval plaque had at one time been attached. (hums idly)

IRL skunks don't seem to much like the smell either; ordinarily when they open up with their heavy artillery the target is another skunk, rather than Br'er Bear.

Skunks spraying other skunks? Never heard of it, but why not? I don't think they're territorial, but they don't seem very sociable as adults either... just at mating time, just for mating.

I was wondering when the south switched from Democrat to Republican. It must have been about the time that FDR was president. He did un-Amerk'n things like try to help the poor, bust up powerful interests, and give everyone a square deal. The south wasn't used to such radical ideas, having not yet emerged from the 18th. century Georgian era.

Actually, the South was still solidly Democratic until the 1960s and LBJ, The Great Society and, especially, Civil Rights. The final straw was when George Wallace broke ranks and ran as an independent for President, thus handing the 1968 election to Nixon. The Republicans then exploited those tensions with their "Southern Strategy," which proved very effective for them right up until the last election. It's still pretty tough to be a Democrat in the Deep South, but it's no longer exclusively Republican territory, either.

I think you're right, more or less. Though as I recall, Kennedy's election (a Democrat) wasn't very popular in the south, so the party must have been on thin ice even before LBJ.

My family drove to Florida for vacation three times in the 60's. The first one or two times before Kennedy was shot, we heard the most amazing vitriole and hatred for JFK from southerners we talked to.

Somebody said to Pogo that Hepzibah is "only a skunk". And he shot back "There is nothing ONLY about a skunk !".
In another strip, the villains of the strip had kidnapped her nephew thinking he was the pup dog. Deacon would not sit closer than several feet to the kid.

I remember that Hepzibah had a cousin or something, with about 30 kits... The cousin was as homely as all other females in the strip, but some of the kits looked like they might grow up to resemble Hepzibah more.

Unless my memory played tricks on me, I feel she looked just as pretty as Hepzibah, BUT was tied down by domestic cares, esp. with all those kids. So many she loses track of them all. She only figured in 1 day's strip.

They were also all panting loudly, and Hepzibah shouted "ALORS ! OBSCENE GENTLEMAN CALLERS ! I AM OFFEND !" and shut the door ! She did open it briefly to spritz perfume at them and refer to their "smelly charisma !" The episode had me laughing.

this picture and all of the commentary is simply wonderful! thanks for sharing a touch of Pogo with us.They need to collect all the strips and reprint them.

Publishers keep trying to reprint all the strips, or the Sundays, or the comic books, but in the end the attempt is always abandoned. People will buy Walt Kelly, but there's just so bloody much of it that sooner or later they start feeling the pinch. "I'll pick up volume 19 later," they think. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but sooner or later they stop buying. Then the publisher stops publishing... Maybe the best way would be to put it all on CD Rom or DVD all at once, for a single all-in-one price.

Fantagraphics made a go at it and virtually all the antediluvian Star strips as well as the opening weeks of the national strip I have seen.

I have yet to see the COMPLETE Pogo on MARS story, where he ,Churchy and Albert go to Mars in a trash can, to find it inhabited by humans and dinosaurs! The only time Pogo had humans* in the strip. Kelly described it as a "working vacation". Near the end, he retconned the story and had them actually in AUSTRALIA so a kangaroo could take them home in his airplane.

* The humans were often nude.

I don't think Pogo is gay. I wonder why he dress as lady.

That's Miz Porcupine. (Or Miz Porky'pine.) She's a middle aged woman with a bunch of kids that appeared in the strip too.

Though, come to think of it, Pogo has dressed up as a girl at least once. It was for some stupid scheme of Albert the Aligator's, or maybe one of Churchy La Femme's.