Although he tried to sell his cartoons to many different magazines, Mort Walker only had a couple of regular buyers. The Saturday Evening Post was a well paying one, so he send most if not all of his cartoons there first. But many remained unsold and he had to send them out again and again. In 1950 another great buyer came along, when he sold a bunch of cartoons to the new magazine sized Gags magazine. Gags had been around since the early forties and always had been a braodsheet. I think Walker sold a vouple of cartoons to the old broadsheet version, but I would have to check my files for that. In fact, you can probably do that as well, because my love of Mort's cartoon work means I have always put online any cartoon of his I could find. Anyway, from that first magazine sized issue of Gags down to the last five issues when the name of the magazine was changed to Here!, he was in (almost) every issue with several cartoons. I think I have all of the 1951 an 1952 issues and certainly all of Here! My collection of 1950 issues is less complete, but recently I got another one with 8 new cartoons. Although some of his subjects may be a bit oldfashioned by now, I think all of them (as well as the treasure trove of Saterday Evevning Post cartoon sfolowing it) are funny and very well drawn.
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And, among several carttons drawn by Mort Walker in The Saturday Evening Post, we found some of them, featuring Spider, the foresight of Beetle Bailey (Mort's greatest creation), when he attended the Rockview (Missouri) University.
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