Words matter. These are the best Mort Walker Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Professionals don’t get writer’s block. I can always come up with the punch line.
When I introduced a black soldier, Lt. Flap, in 1971, the Stars and Stripes banned the strip. They were having racial problems and thought it would increase the tensions.
Some people will do schlock or anything, just to get their name on it.
Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.
I like to keep doing something new and different so people can’t say I’m doing the same thing all the time. I like to challenge myself.
I like a happy ending. That’s what I do all the time. I like to make people feel happy.
I’ve always said that what cartoonists do is create friends for readers.
Seven days without laughter makes one weak.
Comics have always helped people to read. A lot of people learned to read by reading the comics. And it’s our livelihood, after all. If people don’t know how to read, they’re not reading our comics.
If I’m going on vacation, I just work ahead.
When I first started, you couldn’t mention divorce or death. You couldn’t show smelly socks. You couldn’t show a snake. They took a skunk out of my strip one time.
I first sold a cartoon for five dollars. I was in the fifth grade.
Most people are sort of against authority. Here’s Beetle always challenging authority. I think people relate to it.
When the war was over and the guys were back to shaving every day, the editor thought the Beetle Bailey strips were hurting their disciplinary efforts to get the guys back to routine.
The frustration of being ordered around by somebody to do something – everyone can relate to that. I think Beetle represents that – the common man caught in that morass of rules and regulations. I don’t even think of it as an army strip… it’s a world anyone can understand.
You can go through comic strips alone and study the common man. You can trace our history.
You learn just by trying and experimenting. By the time I was 14, I had my own comic strip in the Kansas City paper.
I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him?
Old cartoonists never retire, they just erase away.
The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived.
Beetle Bailey is actually me, in uniform. I’ve got about 20 characters, and they’re all after friends of mine.
I go to the grocery store with my wife. She goes off to buy something. Where is she, anyways? So I ask the manager, ‘What aisle do they keep the wives in?’
