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army judge

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Tax Counsel said:
For a beagle, Snoopy was profoundly wise beyond his (dog) years.
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The entire "Peanuts" crew entertained me for many years.

As newspapers all across our land began shrinking, others simply disappearing, so did Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the gang.

Charles Schulz offered up funny gags, as well as sound advice using the characters' bubbles.

During my time in Nam, Peanuts and Beetle Bailey offered me a chuckle or two.

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Beetle Bailey

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Mort Walker (scripts, 1950–198?)
Mort Walker (art, 1950–present), Brian, & Greg Walker (scripts, 198?–present)[1]​
Running
September 4, 1950
King Features Syndicate
Humor
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Beetle Bailey​
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Beetle Bailey Comic Panel
A page from the comic book version of Beetle Bailey.​
Beetle Bailey (begun on September 4, 1950) is an American comic strip set in a fictional United States Army military post, created by cartoonist Mort Walker. It is among the oldest comic strips still being produced by the original creator.[1]​ Over the years, Mort Walker has been assisted by (among others) Jerry Dumas, Bob Gustafson, Frank Johnson and Walker's sons Neal, Brian and Greg Walker. The latter is currently credited on the strip.

Contents

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Overview

Beetle was originally a college student named Spider at Rockview University. The characters in that early strip were modeled after Walker's fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri. During the strip's first year, Beetle quit school and enlisted in the U.S. Army on 13 March 1951, where he has remained ever since.
Most of the humor in Beetle Bailey revolves around the inept characters stationed at Camp Swampy, (inspired by Camp Crowder, where Walker had once been stationed while in the Army). 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 supervisor, 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 (initially basic training, they now appear to be stuck in time in a regular infantry division). 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. 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.
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 to 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. This gag may have spawned the segment of the children's show Between the Lions featuring a person named Cliff Hanger, who, like Sergeant Snorkel, is hanging from a cliff in each feature.
Beetle running gag 20071121
Beetle Bailey (November 21, 2007): In this running gag, Sergeant Snorkel hangs from a small tree growing out of a cliff, while Private Bailey is seen trying to help him—and himself​

Cast of characters

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

  • Private Beetle Bailey — the main character and strip's namesake; a feckless, shirking, perpetual goof-off and straggler known for his chronic laziness and generally insubordinate attitude. Slack, hapless, lanky and freckled, Beetle's eyes are always concealed, whether by headgear or, in the rare instance of not wearing any, by his hair. In early strips, it was revealed that he is the brother of Lois Flagston (from the "Hi and Lois" cartoon, which Mort Walker also drew for).
  • Sergeant 1st Class Orville P. Snorkel — Beetle's nemesis; introduced in 1951. Sarge is known to frequently beat up Beetle for any excuse he can think of, leaving Beetle a shapeless pulp (one of the most iconic images in the strip). Sarge is too lovable to be a villain, however. Obese, snaggle-toothed and volatile, Sarge can be alternately short-tempered and sentimental. He and Beetle seem to have a mutual love/hate relationship; much of the time there's an implied truce between them. They share an uneasy alliance that sometimes borders on genuine (albeit unequal) friendship. He's from Pork Corners, Kansas.
  • Private "Killer" Diller — the notorious ladies' man, and Beetle's frequent crony—introduced in 1951.
  • Otto — Sgt. Snorkel's anthropomorphic, look-alike bulldog whom Sarge dresses up the same as himself, in an army uniform. Otto is fiercely protective of Sarge, and seems to have a particular antipathy towards Beetle. Originally he was a regular dog who walked on all fours, but Mort Walker finally decided to make him more human-like. As Walker put it, "I guess he's funnier that way." As the Sarge is often found hanging on a branch protruding from a cliff face, so once was Otto.
  • Cookie Jowls — the mess sergeant, who smokes cigarettes while preparing the mess hall's questionable menu (infamous for rubbery meatballs and tough-as-rawhide steaks). Except for the presence of cauliflower ears, a prominent heart tattoo, hairy shoulders and perpetual beard stubble, bears a striking resemblance to SFC Snorkel—and has also been known to occasionally beat up on Beetle. Like Sarge, he also loves food.
  • Brigadier General Amos T. Halftrack — the inept, frustrated, semi-alcoholic commander of Camp Swampy; introduced in 1951. Loves to golf, much to his wife Martha's dismay. Occasionally engages in harassment of his secretary, Miss Buxley. He's 78 years old, from Kenner, Louisiana—though according to Capt. Scabbard he was born in China (April 28, 1971).
  • Miss (Sheila) Buxley — Halftrack's beautiful, blonde, buxom civilian secretary—and occasional soldier's date (as well as a constant distraction for Halftrack). She used to live in Amarillo, Texas.[2]​ She appears in every Wednesday strip, with the exception of November 4, 2009; February 16, 2011; March 2, 2011; and April 6, 2011; why on Wednesdays is unknown. (However, a possible prototype for Miss Buxley, a very similar-looking "new stenographer" for General Halftrack, appeared on January 22, 1970—a Thursday.) Miss Buxley has an apparent interest in Beetle, and is constantly pursued by Killer.
  • Private Blips — Halftrack's competent, jaded, feministic, not-at-all-buxom secretary ("blips" are small points of light on a radar screen). Resents Halftrack's constant ogling of Miss Buxley.
  • Lieutenant Sonny Fuzz — very young (with noticeably pointy eyebrows and very little facial hair), overly earnest, anal-retentive and "by the book", and highly susceptible to squeaky furniture. The apple-polishing Fuzz is always trying to impress uninterested superiors (especially Halftrack), and "rub it in the noses" of his subordinates. He was introduced in 1956. Mort Walker said he modeled the character and personality of Lt. Fuzz on himself, having taken himself too seriously after completing Officer Training.[3]​
  • Lieutenant Jackson Flap — the strip's first black character, often touchy and suspicious—but effortlessly cool, introduced in 1970. Originally wore an afro hairstyle.
  • Private Zero — the buck-toothed, naïve farm boy who takes commands literally, and misunderstands practically everything. Despite all that, Zero is a surprisingly knowledgeable coin collector. In one strip, an anonymous soldier pulls a prank on Zero by selling him a penny for about ten dollars. Zero has the last laugh by revealing to the reader that it is, in fact, a rare coin worth many times that amount.
  • Private Plato — the Camp's resident intellectual (as Tom Lehrer might say, "brings a book to every meal"); bespectacled, given to scrawling long-winded, analytical, often philosophical graffiti. Named after Plato but reportedly based on Walker's pal, fellow cartoonist Dik Browne. Plato is the only character other than Beetle to evolve from the early "college" years of the strip.[3]​
  • Chaplain Staneglass — "He's praying... he's looking at the food... he's praying again!" According to Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook, Walker based the chaplain on Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald's priest character, from Going My Way (1944).

Supporting characters

  • Martha Halftrack — the General's formidable, domineering wife. She's 70 yrs. old and is from Morganfield, KY. (She has been known to sneak dates without Amos knowing.)
  • Bunny (originally "Buzz") Piper — Beetle's seldom-seen girlfriend.
  • Private Rocky — Camp Swampy's long-haired, disgruntled social dissident; a former biker gang member and rebel-without-a-clue, introduced 1958.
  • Private Cosmo — Camp Swampy's sunglass-wearing, resident "shady entrepreneur" and huckster. Loosely based on William Holden's Sefton character from Stalag 17; almost forgotten in the 1980s.
  • Captain Sam Scabbard — hard-nosed, flat-top wearing officer, often as hard on Sarge as Sarge is on Beetle.
  • Major Greenbrass — straight man and golf partner to Gen. Halftrack.
  • Private Julius Plewer — fastidious fussbudget, who eventually became Halftrack's chauffeur.
  • Corporal Yo — the strip's first Asian character, introduced in 1990.
  • Dr. Bonkus — Camp Swampy's loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable.
  • Specialist Chip Gizmo — Camp Swampy's resident computer geek, was named by a write-in contest in 2002. The contest sponsored by Dell Computer Corp., received more than 84,000 entries. It raised more than $100,000 for the Fisher House Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides housing for families of patients at military and veterans hospitals.[4]​
GizmoNamingContest20020506
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  • Sergeant 1st Class Louise Lugg — hopes to be Sarge's girlfriend, introduced in 1986.
  • Lt. Flap wondered why Lugg was sent to the camp; Halftrack commented that she showed up after he called the Pentagon to request an overseas assignment—"I asked them to send me abroad."
  • Bella — Sgt. Louise Lugg's female cat.
  • Chigger Bailey — Beetle's younger brother (a chigger, like a beetle, is a kind of arthropod, and commonly mistaken for an insect).
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