Beetle Bailey: Difference between revisions

[[File:BeetleBailey_2731.jpg|frame| [[Big Ball of Violence|They didn't usually get along this well]]...]]

 

 

It's got an [[Loads and Loads of Characters|incredibly diverse cast]] that increases as the years go by, possibly in attempts to boost low ratings or to keep up with the times. The comic used to deal with military issues that were either somewhat relevant, or were funny to those who were already in the army. The series is now run by Mort Walker's son, and much of the tone and theme of the strip, over the last couple of years has divorced itself from reality in terms of having Beetle and his fellow soldiers remain stationed within the US, oblivious to the wars currently waging in the Middle East.

 

 

As said before, there's a [[Loads and Loads of Characters|rich cast of characters]], but here's a list of the ones most commonly seen:

'''Otto:''' [[Funny Animal|Sarge's dog]], and quite a bit [[Angry Guard Dog|like his master.]] Often he gets [[Ascended Extra|quite a bit of viewing]] in the comic.

 

 

'''General Amos T. Halftrack:''' The [[General Failure|comander of Camp Swampy]]. While he has [[Small Name, Big Ego|all this power]], he's still bullied and henpecked by his wife and so has a lot of pent up [[Dirty Old Man|sexual frustration]]. He plays golf every afternoon, really enjoys his liquor, and spends a lot of time [[Dirty Old Man|thinking about his secretary.]] The latter caused the media to require him to take [[Sensitivity Training]]. These days he's more subtle about it.

'''Zero:''' [[The Fool]], a [[Dumb Blonde|Dumb Blond]] with buck teeth. His usual role is to be given an order by Sarge embellished with a careless metaphor, which he will proceed to carry out in the most literal manner possible (''e.g.'', if told to "Make it snappy," he will embellish the project with mouse-traps and snapping turtles).

 

* [[Abhorrent Admirer]]: A few one-shot characters, Killer to some women, but most of all Sgt. Louise Lugg to Sgt. Snorkel. They actually sort of dated at one point, but the only explanation given to how that ever happened was that she forced him into it. It's ironic, anyway, as an earlier strip shows him imagining his ideal woman as a female version of himself, which Lugg was (admittedly without the bodybuilder figure).

* [[Accidental Hero]]: Beetle of all people receives a medal for being an exemplary worker. It starts when he gives his usual kind of lip ("I could do that, if I wanted to") to Sarge "asking" him to clean up some graffiti. Sarge gets angry and gives a violence-laden order for him to want to do it, then. When he's cleaning the wall, Killer happens by and asks why he's doing it, to which Beetle replies with angry sarcasm that it's because he wants to. The General also happens to walk by and is impressed by this dedication.

* [[Big Ball of Violence]]: Almost any Sarge/Beetle fight. Beetle also manages to make one once by himself, when it appears he has attacked Sarge but is actually not even touching him because he's not ''that'' crazy. (They're sometimes portrayed as able to actually have a fight, sometimes so that Sarge is far superior.)

* [[Big Eater]]: Sarge.

* [[Blinding Bangs]]: Beetle's old but since disappeared by the looks of it best friend in the army Bammy had these, making him a little like Beetle in never showing his eyes.

* [[Brawn Hilda]]: Sergeant Lugg from is [[Distaff Counterpart]] to Sarge, so what else could she be? The biggest difference between them is that she's sexually aggressive, whereas he's afraid of women.

* [[Cats Are Mean]]: Sgt. Lugg's cat Bella has a tough, nasty attitude.

* [[Comic Book Time]]: Extremely little of anything changes, and when it does, it's by arbitrary decision rather than because of time passing.

* [[Crazy Prepared]]: In one Sunday Strip, Sergeant Snorkel has several soldiers march through the desert in the event that they have to go over to the Middle East.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Especially Ms. Blips, Otto coming a good second. But nearly everyone has the tendency occasionally.

** General Halftrack has a tendency to end up being the recipient of the death glare from his wife or secretaries.

* [[Delusions of Doghood]]: Beetle once hypnotises Sarge to think he's whatever he secretly wants to be, making him act like a lion. He also accidentally affects General Halftrack, but he doesn't "become" an animal: "Have you gone mad! I'm an airplane!" (Paraphrased.)

* [[Dream Sequence]]: Sarge gets a really trippy one about being a food-themed superhero.

* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]

* [[Driven to Suicide]]:

** Left hanging another time, in one variation of a reused gag where Beetle overhears the guys planning to pull a prank on him by calling in pretending to be Sarge. Of course, then the real Sarge calls in and buys it when Beetle pretends to be the General and tells him to do something absurd. In this one instance, Beetle says he's disappointed in him and he can just go tie a rock around his neck and jump into water. The last panel shows Sarge about to do so. Of course, it's entirely [[Played for Laughs]] and forgotten immediately afterwards; presumably he didn't do it.

* [[Engineered Public Confession]]: Not intentionally invoked, but in one strip, General Halftrack orders Beetle to find Sarge and bring him to his office in regards to something. After searching around the camp, he reports that he can't find Sarge, but then Halftrack tells him that he knows where he is, causing Beetle to be baffled about why Halftrack wanted him to find Sarge when he already knew where he was. That's because while Beetle was searching for Sarge, Sarge entered the room with Corporal Yo discussing getting front row seats for a Baseball game, and states to Yo to tell the General that he went to the Pentagon to look for a dog, with Yo joking that the General would believe anything. As Beetle had to put him on hold to look for Sarge, Halftrack heard the whole conversation.

* [[Epic Fail]]: Cookie manages to make soup that is too tough to cut with a knife... and steak that is too tough to cut with a machine gun and grenades.

* [[Escalating War]]: [[Defied]] in one Sunday strip, eventually. When going out for a three-day holiday, Beetle slaps Sarge on the back just before leaving. He runs after him and whacks him with a chair. After a trashcan thrown from a roof and ''dynamite'', when Beetle is pointing at Sarge with an enormous artillery piece of some sort, Sarge tells him to wait and points out that while what they're doing is fun and all, Beetle should perhaps consider what kind of shape he wants to be in for his holiday.

* [[Flanderization]]. What characters didn't start out with completely stereotypical features got them eventually. Beetle himself was always a slacker, but by now he's literally won awards and set records for laziness and sleeping.

* [[Furry Confusion]]: Happens in-universe to Otto when he feels sorry for a dog that walks on four legs and wears no clothes. Otherwise usually averted, because Otto is still "animal" enough to interact with other dogs on the same level, even though he's closer to anthropomorphism than they.

** [[It Makes Just As Much Sense in Context]]: ...Then again, the soldiers have taken to intentionally doing weird stuff just to confuse the General and invoke the running gag.

** Perhaps the biggest setup for a weird situation for someone to walk in on appears in the story where the General finally receives a letter from the Pentagon, informing him that he has to be ready for a major inspection in a week. When the general from the Pentagon lands, in the middle of their combat practice with rockets and ammunition flying all over the place, he's met with Otto barking at his helicopter, Zero dressed as a tree going around saying hi to everyone, Sarge running around happily yelling charge while carrying a sleeping Beetle over his head, the Major up to his neck in a mud pit, Lt. Flap returning to the scene in one of his trademark outrageous outfits, Cookie carrying a cake and singing happy birthday, and General Halftrack getting drunk in a torn and ragged uniform.

* [[Kicked Upstairs]] / [[Reassigned to Antarctica]]: It is heavily implied that the reason why Halftrack is made the commander of the camp was so the Pentagon and other bases wouldn't deal with him. [[Reassigned to Antarctica]] has also happened to others in one-off gags whose effects didn't survive the often [[Negative Continuity]].

* [[Kitchen Sink Included]]: Cookie can't even get it right when he uses the kithen sink expression about what's in his food, as Beetle finds a tap in his stew right after that.

* [[Lampshade-Wearing]]: [http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20090321&name=Beetle_Bailey Subverted.]

* [[Literal Ass-Kicking]]: Occasionally given to Beetle by Sarge.

** Anyone who talks to Zero seems to be suffering from [[Aesop Amnesia]], as they continue to use sarcasm on him, even though they should know by now that [[Does Not Understand Sarcasm|he will always take them seriously]].

** Sometimes after giving an order, the person realizes his mistake too late to correct it.

Third Frame: Sarge breathlessly arrives at the General's office. '''The General''': Too late. {{spoiler|The report is on the floor with a footprint.}} }}

** Ms. Buxley when she was being portrayed as dumb.

* [[Mildly Military]]: Among other things, 40+ years of the characters in basic training and largely no suggestion that the characters will be ever shipped out on assignments in any of the major US wars that have happened during the life of the strip.

* [[Mistaken for Gay]]: One of the strip's minor characters is Julius, Gen. Halftrack's chauffeur. He originally had a larger role as the camp's resident [[Neat Freak]], but when angry readers demanded to know why Walker had introduced a "homosexual character" in the strip, he was more or less [[Demoted to Extra]].

* [[Non-Human Sidekick]]: Otto, Sarge's canine second in command.

* [[No Sparks]]: Many readers see Beetle and Ms. Buxley's relationship this way. After they had been 'dating' for about a year, their relationship still never seemed to make it past third date or so. It may be due to '[[Status Quo Is God]]', but you get the impression that the strip's possible ghostwriters don't know what to do with the relationship either. And now even she made a remark in-universe that hints at this.

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: Lieutenant Fuzz. His ambition is to become the U.S. Army's greatest desk officer.

* [[Only One Female Mold]]: Along with [[Only Six Faces]], the strip is guilty of this. Apparently, all of Killer's girlfriends have a small slender build.

* [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything|The Soldiers Who Don't Do Anything]]: By [[Word of God]], the strip is specifically about the foibles of the ''peacetime'' army. Accordingly, we never see the soldiers do any soldiering.

** Used to be [[Justified Trope|justified]] in-comic: General Halftrack's superiors know how bad he is (or they have even suppressed his existence), and don't want to risk anything by involving him in it. It was a running gag that the General would wait anxiously for "orders from Pentagon" that would never arrive because of this. When they did, in an album story, the eventual inspection was such a disaster the Pentagon felt at a liberty to go on ignoring him. Paraphrased conversation from the story:

"Top shame." }}

** Rather oddly used back in the Vietnam days; there were several instances when Sarge pined to go to war, when all he would have had to do would have been to say he wants to go; they weren't picky at Vietnam.

* [[Stout Strength]]: Sergeant Snorkel.

** According to a one-off strip, when deprived of food he gets even stronger. He also turns a greenish shade and goes berserk in his pursuit of sustenance. "Look out! It's [[The Incredible Hulk|the Incredible Bulk]]!"

* [[Sir Swearsalot]]: Sgt. Snorkel is heavily implied to be the worst swear offender in the camp. He does lose a swearing contest once when his opponent hits him with something rendered as '''CENSORED'''. That's right, they couldn't even show the [[Symbol Swearing|symbol]] for it.

* [[Symbol Swearing]]: Sarge is a man of his word. Unfortunately, [http://joshreads.com/images/07/01/i070117bb.jpg this is the word].

* [[Token Minority]]: Lieutenant Flap and Corporal Yo.

* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Sarge was obsessed with pizza long before the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] made it their trademark. Of course, if this term ever appeared in the comic, they'd be sure to point out that ''food'' is his trademark favorite food.

* [[20% More Awesome]]: Plato gives an interpretation of what a demand of "giving 110%" is going to mean: The rest of them give 100%, [[Lazy Bum|Beetle]] gives 10%.

* [[Wardrobe Malfunction]]: The Army supply corps ended up from an unfortunate order mixup delivering pajama bottoms instead of standard army pants to Camp Swampy (which the corps refused to amend their mistake by rationalizing that they are "two legs, same thing, pal!"), and it is implied that this is not the first time such a tragic mixup happened (General Halftrack, when seeing their... new wardrobe, mutters in exhasperation "First the Berets, now THIS?!")

* [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|Where the Hell Is Camp Swampy?]]

* [[Write Who You Know]]: Mort Walker claims to have based most of his original cast on people he knew in the miltary.

** He has said that ''both'' Beetle '''and''' Lt. Fuzz were based on himself (he was a 'maverick' who gained a commission while in the army).

** Zero is based on a nice guy who tried his best but always ended up bumbling things.

* [[Yes-Man|Yes Men]]: The Major and the Captain. Subverted with Lieutenant Fuzz, who is ''trying too hard'' to be one.

"But the way you cleared your throat, Sir... amazing!" }}

 

[[Category:The Fifties]]

[[Category:Beetle Bailey]]