Sunday, February 2, 2014

Smokin' Up a Hoo-ricane

I can't believe it's another Sunday already, and a ground hoggish day at that. I think I ran out of Sunday Groundhog strips long ago, so I'll just keep on keeping on with the current sequence. Hmm, no, I may have one more ground hog day bit, but I think it's part of a longer sequence. We'll get around to that eventually.

So happy GHD! And happy Sunday, Kelly Sunday! And LLK!

April 30, 1972

4 comments:

  1. I wunner if this was Uncle Walt admitting that he needed to lay off the cheroots. Unfortunately, it was the whiskey he really needed to be wary of a little more than a year later. Good move on Albert's part in any event - he looks younger without a cigar sticking out from under his schnoz!

    - (A)

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  2. and a beautiful GHD to you (or as a certain groundhog might have said (stuttered? cought? uttered? whatever!):
    "BZGFT!"
    Thanks!
    Hun

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  3. One of the many sad what-ifs: What would Kelly's Pogo have been like in the '80s and '90s, as smoking became increasingly unfashionable? Even by the '70s, Kelly's take on things was seeming a bit old-world (did he ever draw a car that looked like it was made after 1940?). A chain-smoking Albert certainly would not fly in 2014. Kelly was the first to admit (and joke about) the unhealthiness of his vices. Would he have mixed in an anti-smoking message (as the '90s revival frequently strip did), or conversely, would he have defended smokers' rights (a valid but unpopular argument, which South Park has employed to some good effect)?

    ~Craig

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  4. The occasionally dated comedy is decidedly a part of Pogo now, but I suspect that this strip might have proven that changes were in the wind for Albert and we might have seen fewer and fewer incidents of the gator chomping on his rolled tobacco products. Kelly seemed willing to champion reasonable change. I wonder if he would have ever drawn the line at some point? Would Albert have started exploring medicinal use of hemp? Would Churchy and Howland have claimed a same-sex marriage for tax dodging reasons? I doubt Kelly would have lived to address these current topics, but you have to wonder.

    - (A)

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