I guess if Harvey could get away with about ten SAD SACK spinoff titles then Charlton could with a few BEETLE BAILEY ones of their own. An' I can just hear y'all saying that just about every BEETLE BAILEY comic featured Sgt. Snorkel but eh, I guess this particular one featured him just a li'l more 'n usual!
Actually this one ain't that bad at all. At least the art sticks close to the Mort Walker style unlike some of the comic book variants that came off looking about as pale as the current strip does. Stories ain't that bad either even if most of 'em 'r probably just re-dos of various newspaper strips. Not only that but even though it will take you a good ten minutes to go through the entire issue even if you are a slow reader I gotta say I found the thing rather enjoyable and extremely close to the seventies strip's spirit and overall sway.
Collecting BEETLE BAILEY comic books was not exactly something that I particularly aspired to during my adlo obsessive days (perhaps because of the iffy quality of many of the stories I came across) but this issue of BEETLE BAILEY FEATURING SARGE SNORKEL wasn't bad a-tall! Future flea market scourings might produce some more of these mags and, if sold at classic 1975 flea market prices, really might do my depression-era wages self a great service in the ol' wallet department!
Chris, Steven "Booksteve" Thompson wrote a good overview of the Beetle Bailey comic books - with a focus on the Charlton era - in the current volume of BACK ISSUE magazine (#127, June 2021).
ReplyDeleteI, too, used to consider the "Hi & Lois" and "Beetle Bailey" Charlton comics to be bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of art and story quality--But, as you correctly surmise, Mort's untalented progeny have lowered standards to such a degree that they should seriously consider just reprinting these strip "re-dos" in place of the present version.
Inside artwork likely by Bob Gustafson.
lol sgt snorkel is about to poke the general is his bottom lol :)
ReplyDeleteCheers!
ReplyDeleteWeird - why is the Sarge trying to pin a turd on the geeezer's ass? Fuckin' deviant...
ReplyDeletethis is total b s .
ReplyDeletebettle baylee is republicn pro war b s
you shold read e c comics from the 1950. harvey kurzmen di d anti war comic books like front line combat and blazing com bat. he was like a hippy back than. but he had short har.
stil a good blog .