This week, we’re looking at We’re All in the Same Boat, Beetle Bailey, a comic strip collection published by Grosset and Dunlap under their Tempo Books banner back in 1973.
There’s no cover price on the book, (perhaps this copy was sold at a book fair) but I paid fifty cents for it at our local St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.
The United States was embroiled in The Korean War when Beetle Bailey first his newspapers in 1950 and since then, Mort Walker (and a cadre of co-writers) have been taking gentle aim at The Army with the strip’s titular shiftless layabout and the extended cast of characters that inhabit Camp Swampy for over fifty years. During that time, the U.S. has been involved in many military skirmishes abroad. While in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, B.D. was over in Iraq loosing a leg in service to his country… Beetle Bailey was taking a nap under a tree for a gag or two.
Now Beetle Bailey and Doonesbury are two VERY different comic strips and I’m not suggesting Mort Walker (and his sons who co-write the strip) should relocate to Afghanistan or anything. What I am saying is I have always been interested in how Walker and company handle real life wars in their comic strip. Seeing as this paperback collects strips published during one of the most divisive wars in American history, I thought it might be interesting to see how Beetle Bailey weathered the Vietnam War.
Teachable Moments 