Li'l Abner, about a backwoods Adonis allergic to hetero-romance.
Snuffy Smith, who doesn't seem particularly romantic toward his towering wife Loweezie (they have no progeny, although they are raising a nephew).
And Pogo, about the animal residents of Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
Created by Walt Kelly for a line of Dell comic books in 1941, Pogo premiered in The New York Star in 1948, and entered national syndication in a year later.
The titular Pogo, "a possum by trade," was laconic and soft-spoken, the foil, best friend, and sometime domestic partner of the loud, blustering Albert the Alligator. (we see a similar "forbidden" predator-prey relationship in the animated Sitting Ducks).
They were intimates, sharing a house and a bed. Moreover, their physicality, the grabbing of arms and shoulders, the hugging, the casual pressing against each other, is quite surprising for the 1950s, and suggests a homoerotic subtext even more strongly.Pogo's other friends included the turtle Churchy LaFemme ("Ah loves yo', Churchy); the misanthropic Porky Pine, who doesn't like anybody -- except Pogo; Howland Owl; Beauregard the Hound Dog; and the young "sprat" Rackety Coon Chile, who is studying to become an elephant when he grows up.
But Pogo made new friends easily, with a zeal that veers into the homoerotic. In a 1951 continuity, a carrier pigeon arrives with a "secret message," and the next day the two are shown walking off together, a new male bond formed.
The swamp animals had little use for heterosexual romance. The flirtatious French skunk Mam'zelle Hepzibah was sometimes an object of affection, but more often a "sivilizing" attempt to introduce culture into their backwoods idyll.
On November 10th, 1950, the entire cast watches the sunset, dismal over the conservative turn in the midterm elections (the Democrats lost 28 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate). And the political satire began.
Pogo ran for President regularly, with a campaign platform supporting various liberal causes.Political figures were regularly satirized, beginning with witch-hunting senator Joseph McCarthy, and moving on to Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and Spiro Agnew.
But the gay subtexts continued unabated until the strip ended with Walt Kelly's death in 1973.
Although probably not intended in this "Gay and Fey" association between Albert the Alligator and his creator.
For instance, in a 1968 continuity, a male cat begins chucking bricks at Beauregard Dog, and the other characters include he is in love with him (just as the male Krazy Kat interpreted Ignatz mouse's bricks as signs of affection).
See also: Krazy Kat, the First Gay Comic Strip Character.