BLOG TO COMM

BOOK REVIEW! BEETLE BAILEY IN TOO MANY SERGEANTS BY MORT WALKER (Dargaud, 1984)

Not too soon after I've received the Beetle Bailey FRIENDS book comes this Bailey graphic novel, a pretty capable followup to what I thought was a darn good extension of the standard funny page goings on that were around when I was in the single digits! Y'know, back when things like comics and other forms of suburban slob entertainment seemed to mean even more, especially if you hadda endure the misery and humiliation that I was FORCED to constantly and wanted to let out some pent up frustration in the best way possible. Other'n locking yourself inna bathroom with a stack of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Japanese fishergirl issues, that is. After all, a glance at the funny pages sure came off swell after a day of being bullied by kids, bullied by students and then going home and being bullied by your cyster!

In this particular story Sarge is outranked by none other than Lt. Fuzz's cousin Sgt. Drum, an egotistical and over-confident Master Sergeant who happens to be about as horny as Killer himself and in fact is brazen enough to get the gals from the local school (the same ones from the FRIENDS book) to don bikinis and join him and the men on bivouac. Meanwhile Snorkel's beginning to suffer from an inferiority complex due to all this and well like, things just head on to that inevitable conclusion where (without spoiling things too much for ya) the right people are shown up to be just how ineffectual they really are as if you were expecting some major upsetting of the entire BEETLE saga to have occurred this late in the newspaper strip game. 

The guffaws ain't as good as they were in FRIENDS let alone a number of easily attainable paperbacks but they still got that Walker feel and approach that eventually petered out with age. Hey, at least we have these additions to our libraries to keep us occupied during these long winter nights, or short summer ones if you're the kinda goof off I've suspected you of being for the past few eons or so. If you don't have a reason to goof off and read TOO MANY SERGEANTS, make one!