Monday cartoon day.
I am starting my new easy to comprehend format with three more Mort Walker cartoons from 1951. Over at strippersguide.blogspot (see my links) Allan Holtz has given us the press release for the start of the Beetle Bailey Sunday strip. This release answers my earlier question if the Checker Complete Beetle Bailey reprint series will contain Sunday pages or not. Apparently not, because the first Sunday was introduced on Sept. 14 1952 and the first Checker book will only reprint strips from September 1950 to June 1952. The press release also tells us that the Sunday strip was offered in tabloid, two and three tier format. The earliest I have if in the two tier format from October 1952. I shouldn't be breaking my format on the first day, but here it is.
The three cartoons I am showing here are all from True, a real man's monthly. In the press release it is mentioned that Mort Walker didn't stop drawing and selling cartoons when he created Beetle Bailey. His cartoons kept on appearing in True, the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and other magazines. Only when the Sunday page was added and Beetle Bailey took off, did he drop that from his workload. He doesn't seem to have had a theme in his cartoons. Anything for a laugh seems to have been the common denominator. I don't think they are anywhere near as funny as Beetle Bailey turned out to be, but it has to be said that these cartoons often were the funniest in the whole magazine. Except maybe for the work of two other cartoonists, on whom we'll touch later.
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