The Beautiful Buxley!

Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey has been many things during its decades-long run. It's been a comic strip which celebrated patriotism, individuality, and even the power of friendship. But it's not a comic strip which could ever be considered politically correct, at least when it comes to gender relations.

Sexism in the strip is embodied most magnificently by the bountiful Miss Buxley, the often-harassed secretary of the sometimes oafish General Halftrack. In the offhand manner often displayed in earlier eras, the notion of a woman-chasing, tit-gazing boss is the source of laughter and his hapless buffoonery at attempting to lure a fetching damsel like Buxley is ludicrous. But times change.

Mort Walker for his part has always been an artist, typical of his generation who drew women as the distant allure. In the pages of Beetle Bailey, we have a cadre of soldiers who are in a relatively woman-starved environment, so most of their attention is immediately directed to the buxom Buxley.

(Miss Buxley's Debut in 1971)

It's at once a picture of the real world both for good and ill. That said, the folks in the Europe sure saw the attraction of Buxley and in the Scandinavian comic Billy which is the name Beetle travels under in those northern realms, Miss Buxley is often the focus of the covers. I've featured them here from time to time, but the passing of Mort Walker inspired me to gather up a goodly number. Here the are in all their splendid sexist glory. My mother would be ashamed, but I'm sure Mort is proud.

And to close out this...ahem...look at the bountiful Miss Buxley, here is another by Mort Walker himself. Buxley in the buff is everything we imagined, but then she always is. At some gutteral level that's girl power at its most fundamental and most potent alas.

Regular and more polite programming will pick back up tomorrow.

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Mort D' Beetle!

The passing of Mort Walker was a big deal in the comics world which is nearly bereft of the classic talents who helped define the genre. Walker's legacy is the reams of great work he left behind which told yarns and gags with which an enormous number of people could identify. That's the key to any success on a mass scale and Walker sure achieved that with Beetle Bailey, a comic strip and comic book character who was the military everyman.

Beetle's constant struggle to keep his own sense of  integrity intact in a system which by its very design was working to make him a cog of a larger unit, was a fundamental struggle which never lost its luster after decades. Beetle's very name says it all, a man named for a bug trying to keep a sense of himself and prove he's of worth to his colleagues and those who have cast themselves as his superiors. The attitudes about and toward the military have undergone dramatic changes during the highly successful run of Beetle Bailey, but what never diminished was Mort Walker's ability to tap into that recognizable part of the fundamental human dilemma which we all share. It's the loss of that singular perspective which we should mourn as much as the man.

Here's a baker's dozen of my favorite Beetle Bailey comic book covers from across the decades and from myriad publishers.

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A Bone For Buxley!

Billy is the Norwegian variation of Mort Walker's long successful Beetle Bailey comic strip. This strip seems to have found a way to maximize the Beetle experience by paying close attention to Miss Sheila Buxley, the voluptuous secretary to ever-dim General Halftrack.

The cover above is too scandalous I suspect for the U. S. newsstands (at least those in grocery stores) with Sarge's canine stand-in Otto pulling a fast one and imagining a "bone" for all his nefarious work. Funny but rude. As you can see it was inspired by this vintage bit of "good girl" artistry by Gil Elevgren.

That cover got me to looking for other Billy covers and found several that take the classic Camp Swampy gang and puts them into some other roles. Check out the Marvel heroes variation above. (The "Z" for an "A" on Beetle's brow is dandy.)

The...ahem..."Beetles" seems a natural now that I reckon on it a bit. And since Beetle Bailey is on the cover twice (see the original), it seems appropriate. Strangely Buxley is a brunette (if that's her) in this one and her obvious glam position is taken by her office mate Private Blips.

Not one but two covers spoofing the Star Wars franchise, with a rather oddball sex switch for young Skywalker in the second one. The Norwegians love Buxley!

And finally Jesus himself comes in for some carousing from this gang of idiots. With Buxley involved in the scenario, the idea of virgin birth seems a tad off the mark. Her halo seems to need some assistance from her Camp Swampy boss.

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The King's Spanish!

The pair of delightful images above are two sides to the same comic, one in English and the other in Spanish. The comic prints the same material twice, like the covers once in English and again in Spanish making immediate comparison possible. It's a good way to absorb a little language you're not familiar with.

The comic used was originally published not by King Comics, but by Charlton when they had the license to the stable of characters. In fact a total of four Charlton comics get this bi-lingual King treatment. The Blondie comic was the third in that run.

The first was this Beetle Bailey comic. See a small scan of its Spanish reverse cover below.

And here is the Charlton original.

Popeye the Sailor was the second comic in the four-issue run.

I couldn't locate a really good scan of the Spanish-language reverse cover, but here is a small snapshot of all four of the comics.

And here is the Charlton original.

The fourth and final installment in this run was Hi and Lois.

A fun Spanish version on the reverse.

And the equally entertaining Charlton original.

King Comics did several of these educational comics during this period, often making use of the talents at Derby, Connecticut. Here is a look at a run of Popeye comics which I cherish produced by George Wildman and his team for school use. And here is look at another education-influenced run by King Comics.

I'd like to get all four of these dual language comics. I have a couple, but not all. They are gems.

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