Friday, October 05, 2012

Walt Kelly's “Bloody Drip”

A couple of weeks ago I had a posting that showed an early article about the phenom of Mickey Spillane, and his hard-boiled crime fiction. You can see it here.

According to Life, Walt Kelly, creator of “Pogo,” was inspired by that same article to do a Spillane satire. His own hardboiled detective, Meat Hamburg, is played by Albert the Alligator in a strip for the book, Uncle Pogo’s So-So Stories, published in 1953 Here's “The Bloody Drip” by “Muckey Spleen.”



The Pogo comic strip, a phenomenon in its own right, was featured a year earlier, also in Life, in a feature drawn especially for that magazine.




With Pogo's personal popularity, a run for president was called for. Here are a 1952 campaign button and a later poster.



At Insomnia Notebook WE GO POGO!


3 comments:

David Miller said...

Great post! Never saw this one. Gee, too many choices for President. Alfred E. Nueman, W.C. Fields, Pat Paulsen, Ben Davis and now Pogo!

Kirk said...

I seem to recall another Spillane--or Chandler or Hammitt--parody, in which detective Albert drinks from a cup that, unbeknownst to him, has a bug in it. The bug shouts out, "Lips that touch wine, won't touch ME!" The only allusion to alcohol I can remember in a Pogo strip.

Postino said...

Kirk, meet Dave Miller, ardent, longtime Pogo fan whose comment is above yours. Maybe he can identify the Pogo strip you saw.