Beetle Bailey


Beetle Bailey is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Mort Walker, published since September 4, 1950. It is set on a fictional United States Army post. In the years just before Walker's death in 2018, it was among the oldest comic strips still being produced by its original creator. Over the years, Mort Walker had been assisted by Jerry Dumas, Bob Gustafson, Frank Johnson and Walker's sons, Neal, Brian and Greg Walker, who are continuing the strip after his death.

Overview

Beetle was originally a college student at Rockview University. The characters in that early strip were modeled after Walker's Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri. On March 13, 1951, during the strip's first year, Beetle quit school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he has remained ever since.
Most of the humor in Beetle Bailey revolves around the inept characters stationed at Camp Swampy, which is located near the town of Hurleyburg at "Parris Island, S.C.". Private Bailey is a lazy sort who usually naps and avoids work, and thus is often the subject of verbal and physical chastising from his superior officer, Sergeant Snorkel. The characters never seem to see combat themselves, with the exception of mock battles and combat drills. In fact, they seem to be in their own version of stereotypical comic strip purgatory. The uniforms of Beetle Bailey are still the uniforms of the late 1940s to early 1970s Army, with green fatigues and baseball caps as the basic uniform, and the open jeep as the basic military vehicle. Sergeant First Class Snorkel wears a green Class A Army dress uniform with heavily wrinkled garrison cap; the officers wear M1 helmet liners painted with their insignia. Despite this 'anachronism,' modern weapons and equipment do make rare appearances. While Beetle Bailey's unit is Company A, one running gag is that the characters are variously seen in different branches of the Army, such as artillery, armor, infantry and paratroops. Occasionally dream sequences have appeared where the characters see themselves as seasoned combat veterans, such as Sarge having a dream he was General "Storming Snorkel" briefing on Operation Desert Shield, or Beetle imagining himself getting out of the Army and going to back to school on the GI Bill, where cute coeds all know him as "Bombshell Bailey, the famous war hero".
Beetle is always seen with a hat or helmet covering his forehead and eyes. Even on leave, his "civvies" include a pork pie hat worn in the same style. He can only be seen without it once—in the original strip when he was still a college student. The strip was pulled and never ran in any newspaper. It has only been printed in various books on the strip's history. One daily strip had Sarge scare Beetle's hat off, but Beetle was wearing sunglasses.
One running gag has Sergeant Snorkel hanging helplessly from a small tree branch after having fallen off a cliff. While he is never shown falling off, or even walking close to the edge of a cliff, he always seems to hold on to that same branch, yelling for help.

Publication history

During the first two years of Beetle Bailey's run, Walker did all work on the strip himself, including writing, penciling, inking and lettering; however, in 1952 he hired cartoonist Fred Rhoads as his first assistant. After that, numerous people would assist Walker on the strip through the years.
As of 2016, the strip was being syndicated in 1,800 papers in the United States and the rest of the world.

Characters and story

Beetle Bailey is unusual in having one of the largest and most varied permanent casts of any comic strip. While many of the older characters are rarely seen, almost none have been completely retired.

Main characters

Retired characters

The early strip was set at Rockview University. When Beetle joined the Army, all of the other characters were dropped. Four characters from the original cast made at least one appearance, in the January 5, 1963 strip.

Extras, one-shots and walk-ons

Beetle's family, etc.:
Camp Swampy:
Numerous one-shot characters have appeared over the years, mostly unnamed, including an inspector general who looks like Alfred E. Neuman, and various officers and civilians. Among the few to be given names is Julian, a nondescript chauffeur eventually replaced by Julius.

Censorship

In 1962, the comic strip was censored because it showed a belly button, and in 2006, the description of Rocky's criminal past was replaced with a non-criminal past.

Self-censoring

Sometimes Mort Walker created strips with raunchy subject matter for his own amusement. This was done at the sketch stage, and those strips were never meant to be published in the U.S. They "end up in a black box in the bottom drawer", according to Walker. These sketches were sometimes published in Scandinavia, however, with a translation underneath. In Norway, they appeared in the Norwegian Beetle Bailey comic book, Billy, with the cover of the comic marked to show it contained censored strips. To offset any possible negative reaction, the publisher experimented with "scrambling" the strips in the mid-1990s. To see them, the reader had to view them through a "de-scrambling" plastic card. This was discontinued soon afterwards, and the strips later were printed without scrambling. In Sweden, some of these strips were collected in the Alfapocket series.

Animation

A television series based on the strip, consisting of 50 six-minute animated cartoon shorts produced by King Features Syndicate, was animated by Paramount Cartoon Studios in the U.S. and Artransa Film Studios in Sydney, Australia. The series was first broadcast in 1963 as part of The King Features Trilogy. 50 episodes were produced.
The opening credits included the sound of a bugle reveille, followed by a theme song specifically composed for the cartoon.
Beetle was voiced by comic actor and director Howard Morris with Allan Melvin as the voice of Sarge. Other King Features properties, such as Snuffy Smith and Krazy Kat, also appeared in the syndicated series, under the collective title Beetle Bailey and His Friends. June Foray did the voice of Bunny, plus all of the female characters involved.
Beetle and Sgt. Snorkel were featured prominently in the cartoon movie "Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter", which debuted on October 7, 1972 as an episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. In the beginning of the show, General Halftrack and Lt. Flap also appeared in the Chinese Restaurant scene.

1989 special

A 30-minute animated TV special co-written by Mort Walker and Hank Saroyan was produced for CBS in 1989, but did not air due to management changes at the CBS network. It has been released on DVD alongside the 1960s cartoons. Greg Whalen played Beetle, Bob Bergen portrayed Killer, Henry Corden was Sgt. Snorkel, Frank Welker was both Zero and Otto, Linda Gary voiced both Miss Buxley and Ms. Blips and General Halftrack was Larry Storch. This special was one of a number of specials made in the same timeframe by King Features/Hearst for TV as potential series pilots; others included Blondie & Dagwood and Hägar the Horrible.

Musical theatre

In 1988, a musical based on the comic strip premiered at Candlewood Playhouse in New Fairfield, Connecticut for a limited run. Music and lyrics were by Neil and Gretchen Gould. In addition to the familiar characters from the strip, the plot introduced a wayward computer that promoted Bailey to three-star general.

Licensing