Mort Walker, the man behind the comic strips "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi And Lois," has died at age 94.
He created these comics in the 1950's. Beetle was an army private who was at odds with Sgt. Snorkel and General Halftrack. He was first animated for the King Features Trilogy cartoons, which also consisted of Krazy Kat and Snuffy Smith. Hi and Lois were an ordinary American couple dealing with their kids. Nine years later, these and many other characters from King Features Syndicate comic strips were animated for the hour long film "Popeye Meets The Man Who Hated Laughter." This aired on The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, and was one of the very few produced by neither Hanna-Barbera nor Filmation nor Rankin-Bass.
RIP, Mr. Walker, and thanks for the great legacy you left.
Ouch. I remember reading that Mort Walker, Dik Browne of Hagar The Horrible and Johnny Hart of The Wizard of Id had a group camaraderie going, and would often bounce notions and anecdotes off each other in a kind of loopy brainstorm session. There's actually quite a few running comic strips that have passed from one master artist to an apprentice. Times change, y'know? Farewell, Mort Walker, and thanks for the pages of humor.
Sad to hear his passing...
I hear his sons are keeping the comic alive...I hope there's a dedication for him soon in Beetle Bailey or Hi and Lois...
I do definitely know "Hi and Lois" has plenty of life to go, as it is one of only three comic strips that were introduced to my local newspaper on the last day of 1979 (the other two being "Blondie" and "Hagar the Horrible"). "Beetle Bailey" was finally dropped from my local newspaper in July 2015 because my local newspaper wanted to do a major comics overhaul with fresh new strips - to replace the majority of the strips, most of which were publishing reruns for over a decade). Even "Peanuts" got the shaft in 2015.
I thought I read on Facebook that "Beetle Bailey" was recycling past strips in recent years?
Also, believe it or not, "Beetle Bailey" was animated only once. It was a short segment on "Sesame Street" which taught about the concept of first and last, when it comes to lining up for food. According to Muppet Wiki, one episode with that segment featured was aired on November 21, 1983 (the 1983-84 season premiere), which was just three episodes before Mr. Hooper's death was revealed on air.
Here is the segment:
Video on Youtube
Read my post above, and you'll see you're wrong about the number of times BB was animated.
