The Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly debuted on October 4, 1948, in the New York Star. It ran until the paper folded in January 1949, but the strip was picked up for national distribution in May 1949. Before the strip, Kelly written and drawn the characters in Dell comic books since 1941.
No, the comic book version of Pogo was very different in the beginning and evolved slowly over the years. The strip basically just picked up the characters as they were appearing in comics in 1948.
If you are familiar with the strip, the comic books more closely resemble the Sunday pages: lighter storylines, targeted more at children. Still enjoyable by adults, but they aren't the targeted audience.
When he resold the newspaper strip after the first paper folded after a couple of years, he pretty much just redrew them as written with very few changes.
