Beetle Bailey, the comic strip dealing with the vicissitudes of a reluctant draftee, has never raised much of a chuckle from the Army. The official armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes refused to run it from 1954 to 1959 because it took too flip a view of Army brass. Last month Beetle was again banished by the paper's Pacific edition.
The trouble began when Cartoonist Mort Walker decided his 20-year-old strip needed to catch up with the times. A black character was the obvious answer. Says Walker: "I wanted a strong character who is proud of being black, but I knew it...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
