A: A long standing cartoon character.

Each addition of the Daily Dunklin Democrat has a black & white Beetle Bailey cartoon. The Sun. -- Mon. addition has the black & white, plus full color presentation.

Even if you are a person who never looks at a cartoon, it would be difficult to somehow completely miss Beetle Bailey. The cartoon has been around for 56 years.

Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey, is a Missouri boy form Kansas City. He graduated from the University of Missouri, and then started a career as a cartoonist. (There is a life--size bronze statue of Beetle Bailey in front of the alumni center at Mizzou.)

Although he later created cartoon character, "Hi & Lois," it was 1950 the Mort Walker had his first success. The character was Beetle Bailey.

Fifty six years of Beetle Bailey has of course contributed thousands of different incidents and comic lines, but the primary theme of the comic strip is a battle of wills between the indomitable "Sarge," a not too bright and over weight platoon Sergeant, who is grimly and belligerently determined to make a solider out of the lackadaisical Beetle. Beetle prefers to spend the bulk of his army life snoozing away in his sack.

Sarge has the advantage of military authority, which Beetle more than makes up for his air of indifference and outright laziness. The results is in never ending confrontation.

The comic strip has a cast of characters that Mort Walker has lovingly added to the never ending story. The include: "Zero," the Gomer Pyle of the platoon, "Killer, the lady killer, "Lt. Fuzz," the ever naive second lieutenant, the bungling general, "General Halftract." and his secretary, the oh so delicious, "Miss Buxley."

The amazing true story of Mort Walker and his Beetle Bailey is how they have endured. Beetle came along right after WWII, and, though a continuous depiction of a comparatively dufunct army life, it has made through the Korean War, Vietnam, and now still exists with the war in Iraq and the constant turmoil of the middle east.

Mort Walker is considered the dean of American Cartoonists and has been inducted into the Museum of Cartoon Hall of Fame.

Walker created a cartoon vocabulary call Symbolia. He coined the term, "squeans," to describe the starbursts 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 place of actual dialogue, Walker call "grawlities."

It is difficult to read Beetle Bailey without remembering a cartoon character that was around long before most Americans were born. The character's name was "Sad Sack."

Sad Sack was the consummate example of the hapless private who had been drafted into a military life that was as forlornly alien to his as a trip to Mars.

There has never been a man who put on military uniform who has not been subjected to a series of training films that graphically depict the danger of sexual promiscuity which could lead to venereal disease. Some of them were hair raising and horrific.

After the training film, Sad Sack was strolling down the street when a fellow soldier stopped him to introduce his pretty, and bright -- eyed fiancé. Private Sack, still reeling over the training film, slapped on a rubber glove before he would even shake hands with the poor girl.

Beetle Bailey, like Sad Sack, is the cartoon version of the natural inclination of most American males to resist military life and hang on to their civilian ways.