Mort Walker

Mort Walker's career took off when he was eleven years old, when he sold his first cartoon to a regional newspaper. At the age of fifteen, he drew a weekly cartoon and at eighteen, he became chief designer at Hallmark Cards. After taking various courses at Washington University and the University of Missouri, and a short period of service in the US Army, Walker soon became one of America's most published gag cartoonists. The student 'Spider' soon became a regular character in his cartoons for the Saturday Evening Post. He eventually got King Features to syndicate the comic, but William Randolph Hearst had some minor suggestions for corrections to the comic.

Walker had to transfer his character from the school campus to an army base and change the character's name. This became 'Beetle Bailey' and the comic saw its first publication on 3 September 1950. 'Beetle Bailey' is still published in over 200 newspapers all around the world. In 1954 Walker received the NCS Rueben Award for his efforts on the strip. But Walker himself considers his greatest achievement to be his International Museum of Cartoon Art, which he opened in 1974. Mort Walker is the writer of such comics as 'Hi and Lois' (with Dik Browne), 'Mrs. Fitz's Flats' (with Frank Roberge), 'Sam's Strip' (with Jerry Dumas) and 'Boner's Ark' (first drawn by Walker himself under the pseudonym Addison, later by Frank Johnson).