Between 1948 and 1953 Mort Walker drew and sold a lot of cartoons. Well, actually I suspect he stopped creating them in 1951, when Beetle Bailey started taking all of his time. But he had drawn more than enough gags to last him a couple of years and he kept sending out those comps and kept finished them when they were sold. One of his major buyers from 1949 was the magazine Gags (and it's successor Here!). I have just about shown every Mort Walker cartoon in those issues (only a couple of months still elude me). At first I thought that Walker only joined the magazine after it changed it's size from A3 to A4 in 1950. But I came across a couple of earlier ones with his work as well. While I am still scanning those, here are a couple from the May 1950 issue of Gags, which I prepared earlier. I think Mort Walker's cartoon work was very good, always funny and very well drawn. In fact, it took a couple of yers for Beetle Bailey to reach that point. I could show and tell more, but I am not quite sure what the status is of the proposed Walker book on the cartoon period, so I'll wait for that.
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I found a Mort Walker gag cartoon in a 1953 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, so maybe he was still selling gags then. I think it was quite a scare when Beetle looked like it was going to get canceled and maybe he put himself into overdrive and was still submitting gag cartoons to the major markets just in case the strip folded. Here's a link to all of the gag cartoons from that SEP:
http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2015/11/all-cartoons-from-saturday-evening-post.html
Hi, I have had a look at Mort's ledger for that period and could actually give quite a detailed picture of Mort's activities and probably his intentions. but, as I said, I have to wait and see what the Walker family does with these cartoons before I can comment on it here. I have written down my observations for them and have to wait and see what they do with it. Indeed, Mort sold cartoons to SEP until well into 1953. With Bill Janoca's help i have found all of the SEP cartoons and made a list of most if not all of the other magazines he appeared in. His last published 'new' cartoons were actually early in 1954. But I am pretty sure he stopped making new ones when Beetle Bailey got going.
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