Deck the Halls with Boston Charlie

"Pogo" fans, rejoice!

As they've done with several of the other great newspaper strip cartoonists of the past -- Charles Schulz, Hank Ketcham, E.C. Segar, George Herriman, Hal Foster, Harold Gray -- Fantagraphics will next publish a comprehensive series comprising Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strip. The first in their planned series of 12 volumes ("Pogo" ran from 1949 to 1973) will appear in October. The announcement just went out.

Although I already owned stacks of old "Peanuts" and "Dennis the Menace" collections (stolen from my father's shelves), I've been thrilled by the recent Fantagraphics series of collected Schulz and Ketcham strips. The books are hardcover, the reproduction is gorgeous, and most importantly -- they're complete. According to Fantagraphics, the consecutive run of "Pogo" has never before been systematically collected into book form.

Coincidentally, I just this week received in the mail a CD I'd purchased online: "Songs of the Pogo." The 1956 album, whose lyrics were written by Kelly, was released as a CD in 2004, but I didn't hear about it till it was mentioned on Boing Boing last week. Seems that emusic.com made it available as a free download. I still sent away for the CD.