Beetle is the embodiment of everybody’s resistance to authority, all the rules and regulations which you’ve got to follow. He deals with it in his own way. And in a way, it’s sort of what I did when I was in the Army. I just oftentimes did what I wanted to do. Mort Walker Read Quote
I took my basic training on a golf course in Florida. Then I was on the boxing team. We did some demonstrations, and they put me in a theater one night and wanted me to box. So OK, I came out boxing with a friend – thinking we would just spar around – but the guy walked out, hit me, and knocked me out with one stroke. Mort Walker Read Quote
You can go through comic strips alone and study the common man. You can trace our history. Mort Walker Read Quote
When I write ‘Beetle Bailey,’ I can always do jokes about him being lazy, and everyone gets it. Mort Walker Read Quote
I like to keep doing something new and different so people can’t say I’m doing the same thing all the time. I like to challenge myself. Mort Walker Read Quote
You learn just by trying and experimenting. By the time I was 14, I had my own comic strip in the Kansas City paper. Mort Walker Read Quote
I go to the grocery store with my wife. She goes off to buy something. Where is she, anyways? So I ask the manager, ‘What aisle do they keep the wives in?’ Mort Walker Read Quote
Belly buttons were a big battle of mine. Down at the syndicate, they would clip them out with a razor blade. I began putting so many of them in, in the margins and everywhere, that they had a little box down there called ‘Beetle Bailey”s Belly-Button Box. The editors finally gave up after I did one strip showing a delivery of navel oranges. Mort Walker Read Quote
The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived. Mort Walker Read Quote