Squeezing a laugh out of "Beetle Bailey" has gotten so tough that its creators have turned to hiring bit players when regular characters decline to support the strip's sub-par writing.
Case in point? Where the @#$!* did this guy in today's strip come from? Why, in a comic that boasts a wide-ranging cast of military ne'er-do-wells - Killer, Zero, Plato, Rocky, Gizmo and Cpl. Yo - do the writers need to trot out a relative unknown named Pop to kick Sgt. Snorkel in the keister?
After having put into being dozens of stupid jokes, we think the cast is sitting tight and waiting for better material.
Or the situation may be worse than we imagined. A quick glance at Wikipedia tell us that Pop hung out at Camp Swampy in the 1960s, where he would get yelled at by Sgt. Snorkel all day and then go home to be harangued by his wife. Which begs the question: Why is Mort Walker using a character who no one remembers to complete a joke that makes no one laugh?
Mort and his coterie of cigar-chomping joke writers have been lazy in the past, too. One strip that has appeared at least twice in "Bailey" is one in which a giant banner flattens the strip's best-known characters and reads, "This Comic Strip is Closed For Repairs."
Perhaps the comic should have been closed today as well
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