JMcAndrew sends in a few old Beetle Baileys, noting “Mort Walker was a weird guy.”
Putting some spring in his step?
Why would Sarge have done that? Or was this Beetle’s practical joke?
JMcAndrew: “At some point I’m going to write a thesis on all the homoeroticism in Beetle Bailey. This happens too often to be a coincidence. Here’s a sample.”
JMcAndrew: “I’ve been on somewhat of a Beetle Bailey kick lately but it really is a fascinating comic. This one is some nightmarish body horror on the level of David Cronenberg.”
And then there’s Sarge’s famous gourmand appetite:
JMcAndrew: “A 4000-gallon pot would have a diameter of 96 inches (8 feet) and a height of 140 inches (approximately 11.67 feet).” Would that cook properly?
No tour of Beetle Bailey would be complete without one in which Beetle slacks off:
JMcAndrew commented: “Apparently Beetle Bailey has been murdered and his body has been stuffed inside this filing cabinet. How else could he get inside of it and close the drawer?”
Comics I Don't Understand 
Well, the cabinet must be bolted to the wall or it’d have fallen over when he got in, otherwise pulling the drawer closed from inside is feasible for someone skinny and motivated.
Mort Walker did so many comics about the sexuality of Miss Buxley, drawing her with exaggerated breasts and having the male characters literally drool over her. He went to such extremes on this that eventually they had to address it and turn it down. Almost all of the characters in Beetle Bailey are extremely horny.
The spring in the chair is not a practical joke; it is just an old chair and the spring has come through, causing an injury to the General. I had this happen to me, working in local government, where we didn’t have enough budget to buy a new chair – until an accident happened. I stood up one day, the spring broke through and ripped the seat of my pants, giving me a small injury on my backside. I filed an insurance claim because I had to buy an entirely new suit even though only the pants were ripped. They sent in our internal insurance claims adjuster who actually calculated a value of the destroyed suit, based on its age and useful life. I think I got something like 30% of the cost of a new suit which, at the time, irked me a bit but a least I was able to get a new chair.
I didn’t need to see the explicit image of Cookie’s rear but I guess we should be thankful he is wearing the apron.
No sympathy for General Halftrack. Getting a sharp spring up his bum is poetic justice.
I didn’t need to see Sarge either and I have to question the choice of having a row of toilets with nothing dividing them and that flushing them will drastically change the water temperature in the adjacent showers.
Toilets without dividers are common in guys-only environments.
Walker did a number of strips that weren’t for publication that really ramped things up. There was one where the men were going to carry some nurses across a river by having them sit on their shoulders. Sarge yells out to one pair that she’s facing the wrong way. She tells him to shut up. I hope I described that well enough.
When the Korean War stopped, Walker tried to return the strip to a civilian setting but readers weren’t having it. So Beetle ended up back in boot camp, eternally a rookie just trying to finish his two years. Then the draft was replaced by an all-volunteer force, so suddenly everything about unwilling civilians was as outdated as waiting-for-the-payphone gags. What began as relatable satire (inspired by Walker’s own experiences just after WWII) is now as reality-based as Crock.
The Sad Sack strip turned civilian after the war. Don’t know how long that lasted, but when I was a kid the character was a pretty big deal in comic books, retooled as a near-clone of Beetle Bailey. Private Berger became Mister Berger. And freshly discharged Bill Mauldin, now drawing a gag panel for civilian newspapers, would bring back Willie and Joe in civvies to riff on postwar life.