You Go Pogo?

This is a new one on me. Check out this cry of help that the publisher Fantagraphics recently sent out:

CALLING ALL POGO FANS & COLLECTORS:

We are requesting the help of Pogo collectors who may have original art or high quality reproductions of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strip.

We are currently assembling Walt Kelly’s POGO: The Complete Daily & Sunday Strips. We are looking for the best possible black-and-white reproduction of both Sundays and dailies — especially the Sundays. If you have original art or proofs that you would be willing to let us scan, we would be grateful if you’d contact us. You may e-mail me directly at groth@fantagraphics.com

(Please put POGO in the header). Thank you.

Wow. I love the Fantagraphic collections of Peanuts n' such and I'd been really really looking forward to seeing the new Pogo editions of their books. I just never dreamed the original reproductions would be difficult to find. Fascinating.

When Superman Pulls Out a Midget, Get the Hook

I'll put all the graphic novel and comic info in one neat little posting so that those of you who pooh-pooh such offerings may look for entertainment elsewhere.

My logic runs the following course...

1. Children's books belong in the library
2. Children's graphic novels can be considered "books" when bound properly.
3. There are plenty of classic Superman comics bound in hardcover and found in children's rooms nationwide.

Ipso facto, my dear readers...

4. Superman belongs in the library AND can be considered a children's book.

All the justification is just a lead up to this fabulous post on the Comedy Prop Stylings of Superman. Trust me on this one. It's a gas and it comes from a fellow female. I knew I wasn't alone. Thanks to Dan for the tip.

In other news, it's Peanuts by way of Zits, I guess. The Sandbox offered up a scoop when it revealed the publication of this collection of teen Charles Schultz. Not that Schultz was a teen when he created them. No no, he made them about teenagers. The Sandbox also mentioned recently a 456-page graphic novel called Castle Waiting that has a binding that bears a striking similarity to that found on A Series of Unfortunate Events. I'm not righteously indignant quite yet. Just casually curious.

And finally, Oz and Ends brings us a great piece on a collection of little known old-timey classic comics. Entitled Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969. Mr. Bell offers us this selling point:

Some of these comics bear out the rule that when there is seemingly unquenchable demand (“too many customers”), publishers expand their offerings. This can produce great innovation as well as mediocre and even horrendous work. Thus, in the early 1940s, when publishers couldn't print comics fast enough, there was a market even for Fletcher Hanks's Stardust the Super Wizard. It's crappy on so many levels--storytelling, dialogue, draftsmanship--yet impossible to get out of your mind.

That brings to mind the current state of children's preschool programming. Some of it you'd pay good thick gold coins to remove from your brain, but likely as not such memories are just going to fester in the inner recesses of your frontal lobe until you die.

Finally, a glance at a booktrailer for that graphic novel I mentioned in passing the other day, Korgi. I like corgis. I liked the music. We'll see how the book itself actually does.