Pogo, the comic strip Walt Kelly created while working at Dell Comics, stands as the work most closely associated with his name — a strip that drew on his skills as both artist and writer to produce something that earned recognition across the cartooning world.

Kelly was born in Philadelphia on August 25, 1913, and attended Warren Harding High School before going on to study at the Art Students League of New York. He worked as a character animator and later as a journalist and reporter, occupations he pursued alongside his comics work. It was at Dell Comics that he created Pogo, channeling his experience across several crafts into a strip that would come to define his career as an American animator and cartoonist.

The honors Kelly received over the course of his working life were considerable. He was awarded both the Reuben Award and the Silver Reuben Award, and also received the Inkpot Award. These recognitions accumulated alongside his reputation as a comics artist and writer whose output had made a lasting impression on the field. The acknowledgment did not stop with his lifetime: after his death, he was inducted into the Museum of Cartoon Art Hall of Fame, the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, each a formal record of his standing in the history of the art form.

Kelly died in Los Angeles on October 18, 1973. His induction into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, one of the honors conferred after his death, places him among those figures whose work in comics was judged significant enough to preserve in that institution's permanent record.