Pogo and Albert in Glorious Dell Four Color

The Dell Four Color Comics published between 1939 and 1962 are some of the most beautiful and entertaining comics of the Golden and Silver ages.

Being a fan of Walt Kelly and the Pogo gang, I jumped at this fairly clean copy of No. 148, published in 1947. It's not the first Dell Four Color featuring Pogo and Albert the Alligator on the cover (that would be No. 105 from the previous year), but I like this one better for its illustrations on the left side of Howland Owl, Churchy LaFemme, and Choo Choo Curtis, each in his signature hat. The central image is also great—Pogo is using an oblivious Albert's tail as a jump rope for Ol' Mouse.

The comic begins on its inside front cover with an apology from Kelly. "It will help a lot," he says toward the end of a rather surreal story about a stuffed owl, a boll weevil, and a tse-tse fly, "if you'll just move along quietly to the next page."

And so we do. There's a story about Albert eating all of Owl's catfish "samwidges" and another about Albert making a nuisance of himself on a rainy day, but my favorite is the tale of misunderstanding that unfolds when Owl attempts to capture a family of bugs whose last name is Adam. His misguided, but uncomfortably prescient plan, is to make atom bombs out of them, which he plans to sell to governments for the "cut-rate" price of "on'y 'bout a millyum."