WALT KELLY’S POGO AND ALBERT <i> edited by Mark Burstein (Eclipse: $8.95) </i>

Before he began his newspaper strip, Walt Kelly wrote and drew comic-book stories about Bumbazine, a small black boy, and Albert the Alligator.

The animals in these stories are more realistically drawn, especially Pogo, who has the long snout and the bushy coat of a real opossum. The early version of Albert is meaner and lacks the overweening vanity of his subsequent incarnation, but he already displays the comic gluttony that would so often prove his undoing. Bumbazine takes the role Pogo later assumed of imposed-upon nice guy: There’s nothing patronizing or demeaning in his portrayal. The drawings are charming, but Kelly had not yet mastered the lush, sensuous lines that would characterize his strip.

Eclipse estimates the complete collection of Kelly’s comic-book stories will run to 21 volumes.