•
Rating: The term "army" spontaneously evokes a range of emotions, a precise category concerning moral/material actions, as well as many, many clichés. What comes to mind are the iron discipline, the strict sense of order and individual and common responsibility, the due respect and reverence towards hierarchies. The jargon-defined "naja" attempts to transform, or rather bring the civilian, often outcast, reckless and prey to the barracks law, closer to acquiring values and virtues that have been heralded since ancient times as the foundations of the Man of Honor.
However, the equally "ancient" satire has sought to ridicule the world of arms and green uniforms, pointing the finger of frivolous desecration at that rigidity and near-zero social and moral flexibility characteristic of the army and its affiliates. Especially during the years of the eternal conflicts of the twentieth century, the satirical and "ridiculing" action of comics and cartoons towards the military-war context experienced an unstoppable qualitative and quantitative rise. We have the hilarious Italian-Germanophone Sturmtruppen by Bonvi; the Yankees, on the other hand, get Beetle Bailey by Mort Walker.
Beetle Bailey represents the most vile, mean, disheveled, and reluctant form of soldier, the antithesis of the perfect military man with stars, medals, and badges. Enlisted by pure chance during a frivolous youth devoted to girls and doing nothing, Beetle, despite his far from commendable qualities, becomes the most peculiar character of the ragtag Camp Swampy, a crew of neglected yet amusing elements, in short, the battalion no one would ever dream of training in the ars bellica. With the greedy, hysterical, and psychotic Sergeant Snorkel, the Don Juan-like soldier Killer, the arteriosclerotic and "pornographic" General Halftrack, the bad and savage cook Cookie, the dim-witted soldier Zero, and the crude mascot dog Otto, any resemblance to the harsh military reality vanishes, making it seem like entering the most base and comedic "civil" world: laziness, incompetence, moodiness, ignorance, superficiality, corruptibility (regarding both simple soldiers and hierarchies) are just some of the evils that undermine the honorability of Camp Swampy, now seen from the outside as a cacophony of inexorably decayed minds and bodies.
The mini - collection of Walker's most famous strips fully illustrates the (humorous) contradictions within the military microcosm of Beetle & co. Amusing are the disputes between the latter and Instructor Sergeant Snorkel, driven to madness and irateness by the trivial stupidity of the soldier and his neighbors whom he is forced to "educate," the funny attempts of seduction by friend Killer, a serviceman more devoted to women than rifles, the severe shortcomings of General Halftrack, forever fixated on the attractive secretary Miss Buxley, the misleading incompetence of soldier Zero, whose IQ reaches little-desired heights. Each of the soldiers/hierarchs symbolizes vices and bad habits typical of the civilian and bourgeois world, impossible to eliminate even with the most inhuman discipline: Camp Swampy is the gathering place for misfits, degenerate and frustrated people, those suffering from moral and/or material shortcomings and deprivations. The failure of early mornings, disgusting messes, and endless marches is, therefore, undoubted: negligence and wrongdoings endure or rather amplify; the bourgeois slacker will never be able to evolve into the finest specimen of a noble and valiant Man, suited to imitate the Warrior par excellence.
In the comic book, the comic strip consumer will note the harmonious mix between more recent strips and very first-rate works, providing him the opportunity to empirically compare the graphic - temporal transformation of Beetle & co, mostly noticeable in clothing. Not only that: the collection focuses on the most characteristic characters of the saga by chapter, linking the strips to their individual adventures and/or dialogues in which they are voluntarily or involuntarily involved. The last "chapter" (Once Upon a Civilian) finally narrates the adventures of Beetle during college, before his enlistment: Walker's ancestral sketches of the early '50s are therefore worthily summarized in a handful of gags.
"Welcome to Camp Swampy, the base where the wackiest and funniest soldiers around live"
Loading comments slowly
