Oh gosh, now, after sharing my thoughts about how the guy who draws Beetle Bailey draws raccoons, we got this Thursday’s strip!
And, well. I know how even the gentlest teasing can hit really hard if it gets to you at just the right moment. I mean the right moment for hurting you. My only intent here was to say I don’t think they’ve figured out how to style these animals in a way that fits with the models of the main characters of the strip, particularly Otto. I don’t want you to keep raccoons or other animals off-screen, just to admit the designs aren’t up to the rest of the strip’s vibe yet! I’m sorry and I’ll try to be more focused in my snarking Tuesday when I’ll say all kinds of mean things about Wilbur Weston.
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Another Blog, Meanwhile 
But note he also did not picture Miss Buxley, so he must be reading my comments as well.
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Might be! Although just this week ( https://comicskingdom.com/beetle-bailey-1/2023-02-22 ) he … uh … no, he did not copy-paste Miss Blips and Miss Buxley from one panel to the other, I can see where their hair is different panel 1 to panel 2. All that Slylock Fox training pays off!
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Did Boner’s Ark have any raccoon characters?
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Not to my knowledge! I can’t rule out that in the early years, when there were more minor characters, there was some raccoon hanging around. But given that Otter, the cop, was usually paired with Spot, that junkyard(?) dog, rather than chasing a raccoon I have to suppose there wasn’t one. Not once the cast settled down, anyway.
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I really like the way Greg Walker draws Beet Bailey. He has a very cartoony style that is very fun to see in action. I also like the way he has made the animals in the strip look different from each other. I think he should try to keep the animals off-screen as much as possible so that the designs for them are better.
-Paisley Perez
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Oh, I can’t dispute that Greg Walker (and, possibly, assistants) draw Beetle Bailey. The designs of the main cast look simple enough but they’ve got a lot of thought and experience behind them. This is oddly part of why it’s hard to fit a design for something very different, like the mentioned raccoons or squirrels, in; there’s a lot of work that has to be done to get their style to quite fit something which has so much experience behind it and very few jokes could ever be worth that much effort. Lot of design going in there. (Compare with how odd it looked the handful of times that a horse appeared in Peanuts.)
I agree that mostly, animals don’t quite make sense in the Beetle Bailey strip; there’s just not many reasons for them to interact. But I’m not going to protest if a strip tries to stretch itself. It’s in trying that they eventually succeed in finding a new ability.
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