Books: Possum with Snob Appeal

POGO (182 pp.)—Walt Kelly—Simon & Schuster ($1).

Ever since Cartoonist George Herriman died in 1944, and Krazy Kat disappeared from the back fence of literature, the comic strips have suffered an intellectual hiatus. One syndicate was ready with Barnaby, a cheerful little psycho whose daydreams, and all the characters in them, came to life; but where Krazy Kat breathed a sort of smoky, city poetry that anyone could sniff, Barnaby and his friends mumbled social parables that a lot of well-wishers soon wearied of puzzling out.

The newest comic-strip character with intellectual appeal is a...