Addison Morton Walker (born September 3, 1923), popularly known as Mort Walker, is an American comic artist best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954. He has signed Addison to some of his strips.
Born in El Dorado, Kansas, he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He had his first comic published at age 11 and sold his first cartoon at 12. At age 14, he regularly sold gag cartoons to Child Life, Flying Aces and Inside Detective magazines. When he was 15, he drew a comic strip, The Lime Juicers, for the weekly Kansas City Journal, and at age 18, he was the chief editorial designer for Hallmark Cards. Graduating from Northeast High School, he attended the University of Missouri, where today a life-sized bronze statue of Beetle Bailey stands in front of the alumni center.
In 1943, Walker was drafted into the United States Army during World War II, serving in Italy, where he was an intelligence and investigating officer and was also in charge of a German POW camp. He was discharged as a first lieutenant in 1947. He graduated in 1948 from the University of Missouri, where he was the editor and art director of the college's humor magazine, Showme, and was president of the local Kappa Sigma chapter.
Read more about Mort Walker: Comic Strips, Books, Exhibitions, Awards
Famous quotes containing the word walker:
“To me, the black black woman is our essential mother—the blacker she is the more us she is—and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)