Beetle Bailey: 75 Years of Smiles celebrates the Diamond Anniversary of Mort Walker’s comic strip about the habitually lazy Private Beetle Bailey and those who serve alongside him and above him at the fictional U.S. Army’s base, Camp Swampy, based on Mort’s time as an army soldier, drafted during World War II in 1943 and discharged in 1947. Though set at an army base, what has made Beetle Bailey successful over the decades is that the characters, the situations, and the humor derived from them are universal.
Buy Beetle Bailey: 75 Years of SmilesLaunched on September 4, 1950, the strip initially told the adventures of college student Beetle, influenced by Mort’s time at the University of Missouri. The character would eventually quit school and enlist, as seen on March 13, 1951. Beetle Bailey continues as a daily and Sunday strip under his sons Neal, Brian, & Greg Walker, who worked with their father in the family business as early as the ’70s.
Opening with “The Early Years,” readers learn Mort first “drew cartoons for his school newspaper, The Scarritt Scout, when he was ten. The chapter also features rare work from his time at Hallmark, submissions to various magazines, and a cartoon starring Spider, a college kid whose hat obscured his eyes. Spider was the star of the strip sold to King Features Syndicate (KFS) before Mort changed his name to Beetle Bailey.
The book moves on to chapters broken down by decade, and the pages feature artwork “reproduced from a variety of sources.” such as original pen-and-ink Sunday strips, color Sunday proofs on glossy paper and on newsprint paper. From 1976 to 2016, they “sent black-and-white Sunday and daily proofs.” In 1996, KFS began using computers to color the Sunday pages, and the color and shading are vivid..
“The Fifties” opens with a 1953 character sheet where Sgt. Snorkel and Gen. Halftrack appear alongside Big Blush and Canteen. The latter two did not make it past the year. Interesting to learn the struggles Mort had in the strip’s early days. Because it was determined that it “encouraged disrespect for officers,” Beetle was banned in the Tokyo Stars and Stripes. After the Korean War, Mort wasn’t sure how a military-based strip would fare, so he created a family for Beetle to visit. After two weeks, readers had enough and Beetle returned to Camp Swampy. However, Mort liked the familial setting for comedy and spun the family off into its own strip, Hi and Lois, which was illustrated by Dik Browne, who would go on to create Hägar the Horrible.
“The Sixties” sees the strip’s popularity bloom. It expanded the number of papers it appeared in and Paramount Studios developed it into a cartoon for television. Mort pays tribute to other strips with Sarge dreaming he’s Li’l Orphan Annie or shooting down the WWI Flying Ace from Peanuts. “The Seventies” see the introduction of new members to the camp, including two who expanded the material the strip can cover: Miss Buxley, Halftrack’s beautiful secretary (who appears topless in a 1984 centerfold for Swedish publication, Knasen), and Lt. Flap, the strip’s first black character. The philosophical Pvt. Plato was based on Dik Browne.
As the book moves through the decades, the artwork is well crafted as is the humor, and unless referring to something culturally specific, it’s not obvious when the work was created. Other notable highlights include the introduction of Asian-American character, Corporal Joe Kashikoi Yokoi. Also during that decade, Mort gets nostalgic. Beetle visits his sister Lois to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Hi and Lois and also his old college. In 2002, Specialist Chip Gizmo joins as the camp’s tech officer. The character was named by a reader, selected from 84,725 entries.
Beetle Bailey: 75 Years of Smiles is a testament to the talented individuals who worked on the comic strip. Fantagraphics and all involved in this book’s creation have done a great service for the history of comic strips and for readers, no matter whether a longtime fan or those just discovering the strip.
