Fantagraphics Books has acquired the rights to publish a comprehensive series comprising Walt Kelly's classic Pogo comic strip.  The first volume in the 12-volume series, which will be designed by Walt Kelly admirer Jeff Smith (Bone), will be published in October. 

Kelly, who worked as an animator on such Disney films as Pinocchio, Dumbo and Fantasia, created comic books for Western Publishing before launching the Pogo comic strip in 1949.  Kelly kept on drawing Pogo until his death in 1973.  Kelly blended nonsense, poetry, and political and social satire in making POGO an essential contribution to American 'intellectual' comics. As the strip progressed, it became a hilarious platform for Kelly's scathing political views in which he skewered national boogeymen like Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon.  Pogo is well known for its elaborate and ornate lettering and for Kelly's distinctive use of language and lush brushwork.

The complete run of Kelly's Pogo comics has never been collected before.  In the 1990s Fantagraphics published 11 softcover volumes collecting some five-and-one-half years of Pogo, but this will be the definitive collection that will include all of the Pogo strips in a series of 12 deluxe hardcover volumes.

The addition of Pogo will further enhance Fantagraphics' stellar lineup of classic comic strip reprint volumes that also includes Charles M.Schulz's Peanuts, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, E.C. Seger's Popeye, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie, and Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace.