![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2018\/z061618beetlebailey_trivia.png\")
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Jake Rossen and Mental Floss present\u00a010 Things You Might Not Know About Beetle Bailey<\/a>.<\/p>\n Walker\u2019s initial idea for a strip didn\u2019t feature any fatigues or military equipment. While drawing cartoons for\u00a0The Saturday Evening Post<\/em>, he decided to try\u00a0creating\u00a0a story around a university student named Spider who kept his hat pulled over his eyes and tried to navigate college life by doing as little as possible. Changing his name to Beetle Bailey\u2014the surname was a nod to a supportive editor at the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u2014Walker had him\u00a0wander<\/a>\u00a0into an Army recruiting station. Inspired, he retrofitted the strip so that barracks would take the place of a dorm. (Walker himself had been drafted, serving four years during World War II.) Debuting in 1950,\u00a0Beetle Bailey<\/em>\u00a0set a record for the longest continuous work by a comic strip artist: Walker worked on it for 68 years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the 1950s,\u00a0Beetle Bailey<\/em>\u00a0took its place as a steady but otherwise unremarkable addition to the comics pages. Then Walker got an unexpected promotional boost. The U.S. military\u2019s\u00a0Stars and Stripes\u00a0<\/em>newspaper, which had been running the strip,\u00a0banned\u00a0it from its Tokyo editions over fears it might incite disrespect toward commanding officers. (Beetle was lazy and typically disinterested in following orders.) The prohibition lasted for a decade and was subjected to so much ridicule that Beetle became a recurring presence in newspaper headlines. The strip was eventually syndicated to more than 1800 papers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n After 50 years of \u201cservice,\u201d Beetle Bailey finally got a little acknowledgment from his higher-ups. The (real) Pentagon invited Walker and three of his costumed characters to a ceremony in May 2000 that\u00a0honored\u00a0the cartoonist for his work in supporting the military. Walker was presented with the Secretary of the Army\u2019s Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, the Army\u2019s highest civilian honor. “I think finally the brass has learned how to laugh at themselves a little bit,” Walker said. “They’re not kicking me out of\u00a0Stars and Stripes<\/em>\u00a0anymore like they did a couple of times.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jake Rossen and Mental Floss present\u00a010 Things You Might Not Know About Beetle Bailey. 1. IT STARTED AS A COLLEGE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,56,63,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-comics","category-humor","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20508"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29719,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508\/revisions\/29719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
1. IT STARTED AS A COLLEGE CAMPUS COMEDY.<\/h4>\n
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2. IT WAS BANNED BY THE U.S. MILITARY.<\/h4>\n
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10. THE STRIP WAS RECOGNIZED BY THE PENTAGON.<\/h4>\n