I recently bought this, the original art to a Beetle Bailey strip my Mort Walker. The strip started in the 50s and this one is from the early 70s.
I have a fairly common/basic duo of favorites when it comes to comic book strips in Calvin and Hobbes and The Farside. A little later I’d come to also love the The Boondocks. They are among my favorite things in any medium of all time.
On a rung lower than those for me but still a constant joy were a group of comics that I read in every paper that had them. They would include Wizard of ID, Blondie, Hagar the Horrible, and Beetle Bailey. As an adult I’d come to respect and admire many of the comics that I had no interest in as a kid, mostly because they are so well drawn that they are undeniable. For instance, I’m not sure many things ever are sequential artistic statements like Krazy Kat Sunday strips were and are, they are just astonishing.
I didn’t get into a lot of the more political strips only because I was too young to know what they meant but now I can look at things like Doonesbury and Bloom County and really respect the art and craft. More recent ones that I like are Non Sequitur and Pearls Before Swine.
I’ve always meant to pick up at least one piece of original art from my favorite strips and I decided on this Beetle Bailey mostly because I really like the silhouette in the final panel.
I was a military brat and lived a lot of of my childhood and life overseas and I think because of that Beetle Bailey was an extra draw for me, a lot of it was about life on base and that was the reality around me.
I hope to nab more strip art soon.