Nelson A. Pryor: Guest Columnist
“Beetle Bailey, a comic strip about an Army private who malingered his way through seven decades at Camp Swampy to the consternation of his commanding officers and the delight of his fans in the armed forces and beyond, has passed; at least, its creator has. Mort Walker, creator of the lovably lazy private, recently died, according to the Monday, Jan. 29, 2018 New York Times, p. 7b. The cartoon will still continue.
Mr. Walker had the longest tenure of any cartoonist on an original creation, King Features, which began its syndication of “Beetle Bailey,” in 1950.
“Little did I know when I was drafted that I was going to get almost four years of free research,” Mr. Walker recalled in his collection “The Best of Beetle Bailey,” (1984).
Played the Field
“The Army thoughtfully sent me to a number of places so that my experiences could be broadest,” he wrote. “I was a private, a corporal, a sergeant and a lieutenant, and I was a goof-up in every rank.”
In the first sketches showing Beetle Bailey in uniform with an Army cap covering his eyes, he took an aptitude test and asked what his specialty would be.
“Not engineering... Not cooking... Not driving...” the Army tester told him.
“You have one outstanding ability! Avoiding work!”
And so it went through the Korean War, the Vietnam War and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though “Beetle Bailey” seldom became topical.
The main character’s war was with the Army itself, and though he was never promoted beyond private, he bested the likes of the tough but ultimately endearing Sarge (officially Orville P. Snorkel) and the bumbling Camp Swampy commander, Gen. Amos T. Halftrack. The cast at Camp Swampy also included Sarge’s uniformed canine sidekick Otto and General Halftrack’s sexy secretary, Miss Buxley.
Award Winner
Mr. Walker received the National Cartoonists Society’s award for outstanding cartoonist of the year for 1953. He was invited to the Pentagon in 2000 to receive the Secretary of the Army’s highest award to a civilian, the Distinguished Civilian Service citation. A life-size statue of Beetle Bailey, cast in bronze, stands outside the alumni center at the University of Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri, in 1948.
Museum of Cartoon Art
Mr. Walker was also a comic strip historian and preservationist. In 1974, he opened the International Museum of Cartoon Art in Greenwich, Ct. Its extensive collection of drawings and books, including creations of Walt Disney, Charles Schulz, Walt Kelly and Rube Goldberg, was later housed in Rye Brook, N. Y., in Boca Raton, and is now at Ohio State University in Columbus as part of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
“Beetle Bailey” used the Army as its setting, but its popularity derived from everyday life and the universal battles against authority figures and mindless bureaucracy.
“It deals primarily with working, playing, eating and sleeping,” Mr. Jerry Dumas, regular associate of the column, since the 1950s, told the New York Times in 2000. “That means it can be understood and related to by people all over the World.”