Customer Reviews

The Best of Beetle Bailey

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I had checked this out from the library at least a dozen times before finally finding a copy of my own. Beetle Bailey, while still pretty good, used to be one of the funniest comic strips of all time. This collection does a wonderful job of showcasing the development of the strip during its first 30 years, along with the evolving characters, characters who just didn't make it, censored gags that you never saw in the newspaper, and other gems. This is truly one of my favorites of all time, and I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes the strip or Mort Walker.

This wonderful collection of Beetle Bailey strips takes the reader on a very funny path. The reader is treated to Beetle Bailey, the goof-off college student to Beetle Bailey, REPORTING FOR ACTIVE DUTY, SIR! We also see Sarge transformed from an officer with a medium build to the husky, lovable, short-fused Sarge we love today. We are introduced to a group of funny oddball characters, such as Zero, named for his I.Q, Lt. Fuzz, a lovable toady, General Half-Track, a funny figurehead and Killer Diller, the incurable romantic. Plato, the intellectual brings wisdom and reason into the mix; Rocky, the inveterate rebel a sense of alienation among his fellow enlisted men; Lt. Flap, a sense of decorum. He's one of the few no nonsense officers after Sarge! Cookie, the unappreciated camp cook who looks a lot like Sarge, Sarge's bull dog, Otto, the camp mascot and other very funny characters.

This is such a funny book. Let Private Beetle Bailey teach you the finer points of Sarge baiting, bull dog chasing, work dodging and Cookie crumbling. This book is a treasure for true fans of the strip.

Published not long after the 30th aniversery of the strip and featuring highlights going back to its early days as a college-oriented rather than military themed strip, "The Best of Beetle Bailey" is a must own for fans. It features autobiographical material of creator Mort Walker as well as the best bits from the strip's 60s and 70s heyday. This is a vital book for understanding the history of the strip.

Purchased for son who is 11 as a Christmas gift. He loves the military and comics so it was a natural. He likes the book and all is fine but there are some more mature strips and works that were not published in newspapers that are more mature (or at least of an adult nature) than I would recommend for youngsters. Would have like to know what I shared before purchasing but, again he likes it.

I loved Beetle Bailey when I first read the strip at Jakarta Post, a daily newspaper in Jakarta, Indonesia around 1990. After collecting every issue for several years, Jakarta Post stopped subscribing Beetle Bailey and I stopped buying the newspaper ever since. Perhaps it also discontinued their subscription to King Features Syndicate (the place where Bailey belongs). Sometime in the 2000s I found out the syndicate offered online subscription and I instantly listed my name (and it's quite cheap, USD 15 for a year, got any titles you want every day!). Later on I decided to find reference books on Beetle Bailey. Couldn't find what I was looking for until I found this book.

It was a blind-shopping, since there was no solid info of what's inside. My best guess was...this is a collection of best Bailey's. When I got it and started reading, thank God I bought the right book!

This book contains many things, if not all, you want to know about Beetle Bailey: the first strip ever, his original background (as a college student, not in the army), why Walker moved him to the army, first appearance of each characters & their first look, Beetle's evolution, Beetle got banned, real-life characters inspired Beetle's universe, pictures, etc. Almost everything! WHy almost? Simply coz I have no idea what's missing from this book. It even has several sketches the editors disagreed to publish.

My only complaint of this book is the printing quality. It was originally published in 1984 and reprinted in 2005. I think the original print was in colour, which I haven't clarify to anyone. Many of the pictures or strips are not clean.... have shades or marks as if they were originally in colour and photocopied into B/W. Maybe this is just a not-perfect printing quality. I don't know. But...it happened only on several pages. Overall this book has top printing quality, and the type of paper is absolutely perfect.

It's a must have for all Beetle Bailey fans. Get it while it still exist!