Flap Flap

Beetle Bailey, the comic strip dealing with the vicissitudes of a reluctant draftee, has never raised much of a chuckle from the Army. The official armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes refused to run it from 1954 to 1959 because it took too flip a view of Army brass. Last month Beetle was again banished by the paper's Pacific edition.

The trouble began when Cartoonist Mort Walker decided his 20-year-old strip needed to catch up with the times. A black character was the obvious answer. Says Walker: "I wanted a strong character who is proud of being black, but I knew it had to be a funny character to go along with the rest of the strip." Walker named him Lieut. Flap and gave him an Afro hairstyle, a goatee and a brain power that seems a bare millivolt greater than the low-powered intellects around him. His rank requires white subordinates to call him "Sir."

For obvious reasons, Lieut. Flap was immediately mustered out by newspapers in Winston-Salem, N.C., Richmond, and Tampa, Fla. Stars and Stripes' reasons were just as obvious, but much more labored. "Flap wasn't even a good caricature, but simply in bad taste," said Managing Editor Howard C. Peterson. "Negro soldiers aren't like that." Added Editor-in-Chief Colonel William V. Koch: "Besides, the Army regulation wouldn't allow a soldier or officer to grow a goatee. And Flap has one."

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