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Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook
Many cartoonists have successfully caused brief splashes of excitement throughout history but simply don't have what it takes to command the world's attention for half a century. That is, unless you're comic genius Mort Walker, beloved creator of the cartoon strips Hi and Lois and Beetle Bailey. Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook provides a comprehensive look at the life and work of this suave cartoonist for his legions of fans and aficionados of the comic world alike. In this extensive work painstakingly compiled by Walker over the course of two years, he collects his earliest artwork, reveals who his characters are based on, follows the development of his creations, and relates a fascinating perspective about the evolution of the cartooning world. This full-color scrapbook is a unique glimpse into the window of cartooning that only award-winning veteran artist Mort Walker could provide. This book will be essential for comic strip historians, collectors, and faithful fans.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2000
26 people want to read
About the author
Mort Walker
406 books19 followersAddison Morton Walker, more popularly known as Mort Walker, was an American comic artist, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954.
Born in El Dorado, Kansas, he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He had his first comic published at the age of 11, and sold his first cartoon at 12. At 15 he worked as a comic-strip artist for a daily newspaper and by 18 he became chief editorial designer at Hall Brothers. After graduating from Northeast High School in the Kansas City, Missouri School District, he attended the University of Missouri, where a life size bronze statue of Beetle Bailey sits in front of the alumni center.
In 1943 he was drafted into the United States Army where he spent time in Europe during World War II. He was discharged as a First Lieutenant four years later. After military service and graduation from University of Missouri in 1948, where he was president of the local Kappa Sigma chapter[1], he went to New York to pursue his cartooning career. His first 200 cartoons were rejected, but he was slowly gaining recognition among the editors for his talent. His big break came with Beetle Bailey and another success followed with Hi and Lois. Other noteworthy cartoons he has created include Boner's Ark, Gamin & Patches, Mrs. Fitz's Flats, The Evermores, Sam's Strip and Sam & Silo (the last two with Jerry Dumas).
After more than 50 years in the business, Mort Walker still supervises the daily work at his studio, which also employs 6 of his children.
In 1974 he founded The National Cartoon Museum, and in 1989 he was inducted into the Museum of Cartoon Art Hall of Fame. He received the Reuben Award of 1953 for Beetle Bailey, the National Cartoonist Society Humor Strip Award for 1966 and 1969, the Gold T-Square Award in 1999, the Elzie Segar Award for 1977 and 1999, and numerous other awards for his work and dedication to the art.
In his book The Lexicon of Comicana (1980), written as a satirical look at the devices cartoonists use in their craft, Walker invented a cartoon vocabulary called Symbolia. For example, Walker coined the term "squeans" to describe the starbusts and little circles that appear around a cartoon's head to indicate intoxication. The typographical symbols that stand for profanities, which appear in dialogue balloons in the place of actual dialogue, Walker called "grawlixes."
Born in El Dorado, Kansas, he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He had his first comic published at the age of 11, and sold his first cartoon at 12. At 15 he worked as a comic-strip artist for a daily newspaper and by 18 he became chief editorial designer at Hall Brothers. After graduating from Northeast High School in the Kansas City, Missouri School District, he attended the University of Missouri, where a life size bronze statue of Beetle Bailey sits in front of the alumni center.
In 1943 he was drafted into the United States Army where he spent time in Europe during World War II. He was discharged as a First Lieutenant four years later. After military service and graduation from University of Missouri in 1948, where he was president of the local Kappa Sigma chapter[1], he went to New York to pursue his cartooning career. His first 200 cartoons were rejected, but he was slowly gaining recognition among the editors for his talent. His big break came with Beetle Bailey and another success followed with Hi and Lois. Other noteworthy cartoons he has created include Boner's Ark, Gamin & Patches, Mrs. Fitz's Flats, The Evermores, Sam's Strip and Sam & Silo (the last two with Jerry Dumas).
After more than 50 years in the business, Mort Walker still supervises the daily work at his studio, which also employs 6 of his children.
In 1974 he founded The National Cartoon Museum, and in 1989 he was inducted into the Museum of Cartoon Art Hall of Fame. He received the Reuben Award of 1953 for Beetle Bailey, the National Cartoonist Society Humor Strip Award for 1966 and 1969, the Gold T-Square Award in 1999, the Elzie Segar Award for 1977 and 1999, and numerous other awards for his work and dedication to the art.
In his book The Lexicon of Comicana (1980), written as a satirical look at the devices cartoonists use in their craft, Walker invented a cartoon vocabulary called Symbolia. For example, Walker coined the term "squeans" to describe the starbusts and little circles that appear around a cartoon's head to indicate intoxication. The typographical symbols that stand for profanities, which appear in dialogue balloons in the place of actual dialogue, Walker called "grawlixes."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 14, 2026
One of my drill sergeants use to call us 'Beetle Bailey' when we made a mistake. This was a wonderful look at Mort Walker and all that he contributed to this medium of communication that has influenced so many - wish I could have seen him at a comic convention and gotten some BB stuff signed.
September 15, 2023
A Delightful (if Dated) Scrapbook of a Comic Strip Pioneer
Our whole publishing house team mourned the passing of Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey and other comic strips, when he died in 2018 at age 94. Not only was he a talented and exceptionally productive comic creator—he was quite simply a great guy who cared about families and the wellbeing of communities.
Four years before his death, Mort sent us a special full-page comic strip for a big paperback comic book our team was preparing to publish called, Bullying Is No Laughing Matter. Schools used that 2014 book's dozens of comics, all contributed by their creators, to help kids discuss supporting each other if the threat of bullying should arise in their midst. I visited one elementary school where the kids enjoyed a couple of pages and then drew their own anti-bullying cartoons that were taped up on walls around the whole school.
Despite his advanced age, Mort was eager to contribute a page for such a good-spirited publishing project. Even though his most famous comic strip was about army life, Mort told us that he was always trying to help lessen the violence in our world. Once our book was published in 2014, we were proud to place a copy into the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University. I mention this detail, because that OSU institution is another example of Mort Walker's benevolence. He had started his own national archive for American comics back in 1974. When Mort's museum faced hard times financially more than three decades after its founding, Mort merged with the OSU center to make that OSU library the world's largest research facility and archive of comic strips, editorial cartoons and cartoon art.
That background explains why I use the word "dated" in the headline of this book review. This delightful scrapbook of Mort's life features the development of his museum as a kind of crescendo passion project in his long life. That's because this book was published in 2000, before his museum faced its financial downturn. So, readers might be a little confused by that section in this book and perhaps decide they'd like to go visit the museum pictured in these pages. You can't, because today his collection is at OSU.
Despite that issue in the book's timeline, I'm giving this 4 stars for the sheer enjoyment I found in its pages.
If you're a Beetle Bailey fan—or perhaps a fan of Hi and Lois or perhaps Boner's Ark (which ended in 2000)—then this is a wonderful book to enjoy over multiple evenings. Mort planned this book like a scrapbook of his life with short stories (sometimes only a couple of paragraphs)—mixed with what must be more than 1,000 photos and cartoons and illustrations. I enjoyed a few pages at a time over a number of weeks and Mort's bright spirit always left me with a smile.
Although I knew a lot about Mort's life and career, I learned a lot in this book.
I never knew that, early in his career, he worked for Hallmark cards. He was such a prolific illustrator that Hallmark loved him—and he claims that he played a role in helping to turn greeting cards from sugary hearts-and-flowers-and-animals imagery in the direction of humorous best wishes.
I never knew he created comic strips called Mrs. Fitz's Flats and Sam's Strips—and a number of other short-lived strips you can discover in this book. They made me smile, too, and increased my admiration for Mort's super-human capacity to produce humorous work.
I was aware that Beetle Bailey originated as a comic strip about college life, but I had not seen some of the early gems in this scrapbook. Beetle Bailey was the same happy-go-lucky guy who did his best to avoid work, but the setting was a generic college campus. And, as an undergraduate, Beetle fashioned himself as "hip" by smoking a pipe! Within two years, however, Mort and his syndicate managers agreed that Beetle should become a GI at Camp Swampy. The comic strip's audience grew from 12 papers originally to hundreds across the U.S. In some comic polls over the years, Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois ranked as the most popular comic strips among readers. I know that's true because Mort "clipped" news of those rankings and put a couple of examples in this scrapbook.
By the way, comic collectors: Mort points out that his rarest and most valuable comic strips are the original college-life Beetle Bailey strips, because they appeared in so few newspapers!
Given the background about Mort that I explained above, I thoroughly enjoy this scrapbook and these fresh memories of what a great, good-natured guy Mort Walker was for nearly a century. I'm among the many who continue to miss him!
Our whole publishing house team mourned the passing of Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey and other comic strips, when he died in 2018 at age 94. Not only was he a talented and exceptionally productive comic creator—he was quite simply a great guy who cared about families and the wellbeing of communities.
Four years before his death, Mort sent us a special full-page comic strip for a big paperback comic book our team was preparing to publish called, Bullying Is No Laughing Matter. Schools used that 2014 book's dozens of comics, all contributed by their creators, to help kids discuss supporting each other if the threat of bullying should arise in their midst. I visited one elementary school where the kids enjoyed a couple of pages and then drew their own anti-bullying cartoons that were taped up on walls around the whole school.
Despite his advanced age, Mort was eager to contribute a page for such a good-spirited publishing project. Even though his most famous comic strip was about army life, Mort told us that he was always trying to help lessen the violence in our world. Once our book was published in 2014, we were proud to place a copy into the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University. I mention this detail, because that OSU institution is another example of Mort Walker's benevolence. He had started his own national archive for American comics back in 1974. When Mort's museum faced hard times financially more than three decades after its founding, Mort merged with the OSU center to make that OSU library the world's largest research facility and archive of comic strips, editorial cartoons and cartoon art.
That background explains why I use the word "dated" in the headline of this book review. This delightful scrapbook of Mort's life features the development of his museum as a kind of crescendo passion project in his long life. That's because this book was published in 2000, before his museum faced its financial downturn. So, readers might be a little confused by that section in this book and perhaps decide they'd like to go visit the museum pictured in these pages. You can't, because today his collection is at OSU.
Despite that issue in the book's timeline, I'm giving this 4 stars for the sheer enjoyment I found in its pages.
If you're a Beetle Bailey fan—or perhaps a fan of Hi and Lois or perhaps Boner's Ark (which ended in 2000)—then this is a wonderful book to enjoy over multiple evenings. Mort planned this book like a scrapbook of his life with short stories (sometimes only a couple of paragraphs)—mixed with what must be more than 1,000 photos and cartoons and illustrations. I enjoyed a few pages at a time over a number of weeks and Mort's bright spirit always left me with a smile.
Although I knew a lot about Mort's life and career, I learned a lot in this book.
I never knew that, early in his career, he worked for Hallmark cards. He was such a prolific illustrator that Hallmark loved him—and he claims that he played a role in helping to turn greeting cards from sugary hearts-and-flowers-and-animals imagery in the direction of humorous best wishes.
I never knew he created comic strips called Mrs. Fitz's Flats and Sam's Strips—and a number of other short-lived strips you can discover in this book. They made me smile, too, and increased my admiration for Mort's super-human capacity to produce humorous work.
I was aware that Beetle Bailey originated as a comic strip about college life, but I had not seen some of the early gems in this scrapbook. Beetle Bailey was the same happy-go-lucky guy who did his best to avoid work, but the setting was a generic college campus. And, as an undergraduate, Beetle fashioned himself as "hip" by smoking a pipe! Within two years, however, Mort and his syndicate managers agreed that Beetle should become a GI at Camp Swampy. The comic strip's audience grew from 12 papers originally to hundreds across the U.S. In some comic polls over the years, Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois ranked as the most popular comic strips among readers. I know that's true because Mort "clipped" news of those rankings and put a couple of examples in this scrapbook.
By the way, comic collectors: Mort points out that his rarest and most valuable comic strips are the original college-life Beetle Bailey strips, because they appeared in so few newspapers!
Given the background about Mort that I explained above, I thoroughly enjoy this scrapbook and these fresh memories of what a great, good-natured guy Mort Walker was for nearly a century. I'm among the many who continue to miss him!
January 24, 2016
read SOMETIME in 2010
June 10, 2009
What an ego! Mort Walker does not need me to be his fan--he already has that covered. Still, this is a fun book that is full of reprinted strips and other bits. I wish it had more facts on merchandising, more on his characters in other media, and less about how awesome Mort Walker is--these make the book less that it might be. Still, this is a fun, fun book.
March 10, 2026
Classy, funny, educational.
Notes:
Tetelology a forerunner of emojis?
239, Lexicon of Comicana
My copy is 323 pages.
Notes:
Tetelology a forerunner of emojis?
239, Lexicon of Comicana
My copy is 323 pages.
October 8, 2014
Personal stories and an over view of works from a life of comic strips.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews