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Beetle Bailey’s Stepson Reflects

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D. D. Degg Updated: December 16, 2025 at 11:08 am EST 1 minute 0 comments

Among the cartoonists who were members of the famed Mort Walker Studio it could be argued that none were more involved and important than Jerry Dumas. Certainly none lasted longer in the partnership.

From Timothy Dumas:

In June of 1956 [Jerry Dumas] rolled into the Belle Haven driveway of Mort Walker, creator of the popular comic strip Beetle Bailey.

Dad worked with Mort on Beetle Bailey and other comic strips for the next 60 years, until his death in 2016. Walker himself left the terrestrial drawing board in 2018, at age 94.

Jerry Dumas’ son grew up with the gang at “King Features East.” For Moffly Media Timothy Dumas looks back on the Beetle Bailey comic strip and Mort and Jerry’s partnership in Beetle’s 75th anniversary year.

One detail, though, was all business: a wall-map dotted with red pushpins to indicate the towns and cities where Beetle Bailey appeared. There were coastal pile-ups, Midwestern blotches and stray berries sprouting in desert outposts, all adding up to a single fact: Mort was the hottest cartoonist in the world, alongside Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz. In 1965 Beetle Bailey crossed the 1,000-newspaper threshold—only the second comic strip ever to do so, after the much older Blondie. (Peanuts then had 770 papers).

Mort got complaints about violence. But a pulverized Beetle is one of the strip’s iconic images. Of violence, Mort once said, “That’s the way comic strips have always been. In Maggie and Jiggs, she was always throwing rolling pins at him. Krazy Kat was always getting hit by a brick. So I continue that tradition even if I get complaints. It’s a comic strip, after all.”