Mort Walker is a legendary comic artist, although depending on who you talk to, his position in history is attributed differently. King Features, which syndicated many of Mort's strips -- including Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois -- says, "Walker has been recognized not only for the wide and enduring popularity of his work but also for his stylistic innovations and his leadership in the comics field. His use of high-contrast, deceptively simple imagery and compact gags became the standard for a generation of cartoonists and endures today."

I say, Mort Walker is the luckiest man alive, because he has managed to make a career our of two jokes: a lazy guy in the Army will always try to be lazy, and kids in an innocent suburban home say the darndest things. The blunt, cold truth here is that these comics are not, and have never been, very funny. To his credit, they both still come out, and people still read them, and he still finds ways to squeeze every last drop of content out of desperately tired situations.

At some point, he handed Hi and Lois over to his two sons and an artist, and it has been going strong ever since. Yet, since its inception in 1954, nothing has actually happened. The characters have hardly aged, they kids continue to say the darndest things, and the strip passed quietly under the eyes of readers from a whopping and completely baffling 1,100 papers.

This bothers me, because there are so many well-conceived, thoughtful, culturally relevant comic strips out there. The innocence and suburban mildness of Hi and Lois, and the Korean War in which Beetle Bailey takes place, simply do not exist anymore. Look at the Boondocks, or Non-Sequitor. These are wonderfully poignant comic strips, and in a time when the media has a responsibility to challenge culture, they do it with wit and charm. All that Mort Walker's comics capture is an implied refusal to catch up with the times. They are dull and insignificant, and I think they should go.

I wondered what someone like Greg Walker, one of Mort's sons who now writes Hi and Lois, thinks about all of this. Does he take this strip seriously? Is he really stuck in the days of old, when Johnny had Jane home by nine p.m., and only women took care of the kids because that's just what women do? Or, is he working on this strip because it's a formula that makes him money, and he's not about to have a hamburger when the cow's still making milk? (was that an awful analogy or what?)

The only way to find out, really, was to perform some kind of experiment, and see how he responds. So, in the name of science, that's what i did. I like to call this...

Five days' worth of Hi and Lois cartoons,
which were put through a pseudo-intellectual
analysis and then e-mailed to Greg Walker,
one of the strip's writers
(by Jason Feifer)

DAY ONE:

8/02/02
Mr. Walker,

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Snoring standard leaves Trixie jaded"

Today, Trixie is scolded for making noise while her father sleeps, and then questions why her heavily snoring father is not kept to the same standards. She asks quite poignantly, "Why doesn't daddy have to keep quiet while daddy's sleeping?" Indeed, Trixie, why DOESN'T he?

Trixie has hit upon the complex issues of double standards, which is a surprisingly complex concept for a baby to grasp. However, since Trixie has been a baby since 1954, it seems reasonable to afford her a more advanced level of thinking than her body permits.

Trixie is clearly the glue in these two panels. Each parent, Hi and Lois, appears separately, although their bond of marriage has aligned their moral standards into a sort of auto-defense system. This leaves Trixie out of the loop, completely abandoned by her perceived reality and unable to grasp what is clearly a circular argument that existed long before Lois's womb belched this curious child out. This is a sad day for Trixie, and perhaps one she will reflect upon when she is bagging groceries next to a boy that's making twice her salary.

I have one minor complaint about today's strip, and it is a slight blip in artistic consistency. In the first panel, Lois's right hand had miraculously spawned another finger, thrusting her into the cold world of excess body parts, now in contrast to her well-conceived, three-finger-per-hand family. As someone who has 10 fingers in total, I cannot sympathize with Lois, but I tried not to stare.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY TWO:

8/3/02
Mr. Walker,

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Circular, soapy residue."

Today, Dot is scolded for not draining the tub after her bath, but in fact has only left an overflow of bubbles, which has been misinterpreted by Lois.

I must admit, I am perplexed by the physics of this strip, and I must assume the inconsistency was done intentionally. The bathtub in the second panel is literally bursting with bubbles, yet Dot has claimed that she drained the tub. It is unfortunate that there is not a third panel, in which Lois might say, "Dot, by simple laws of physics, there is no way that many bubbles are existing within our family's bathtub. The sheer weight of the bubbles on top would destroy the ones on the bottom, and since I see no soapy implosion, I must call you a liar."

And then Dot could say something clever like, "At least I'm not a dirty liar," which would be a subtle and insightful observation that she had just taken a bath. Or, you could construct some other punchline, as your profession is apt to do.

If Dot is indeed lying, which men like Mr. Isaac Newton has proven she is, then I am curious as to why. Is this your subtle declaration that children are not able to admit their mistakes, and therefore that stubbornness -- thus, divorce, a lack of friends, and/or advancement in the legal profession -- are all predictable from youth? It is an interesting theory, Mr. Walker, and one I hope you continue to explore.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

AND THEN, GREG WRITES BACK!:

Unfortunately, you neglect to take into consideration the plethora of toys and bath items that Dot normally employs during her ablutions. To wit, 3 boats, 1 soap dish, 2 washcloths, a bar of soap, 1 plastic frog, 2 dolls, a set of 4 fish, a ball and 1 large rubber ducky. Once the water is removed, these items still form a solid foundation to support the bubbles. Yet, Dot's ability to debate this issue clearly indicates a potential to be successful in the legal profession as you suggest.

DAY THREE:

8/4/02
Mr. Walker,

Thank you for your comments. I am embarrassed that I had not considered Dot's playthings. Physics suddenly seems so pathetic in the face of a child's imagination.

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Chip is humored."

In today's strip, Chip says he is creating a comic strip for his generation, which is one that includes many curse words, represented as a string of symbols. Lois looks at the comic, and says, "That's funny!"

I'm sure you'll note the double-entendre in my title -- that Lois is both humoring Chip and acting humored by Chip's "comic." The true irony of the incident, however, is that Chip's comic is nothing more than a blank piece of paper, which we clearly see as drawn in the first panel. Chip does appear to fully believe he has drawn a comic, and I must wonder if you are crafting him as delusional, or perhaps revealing an undiscovered disability. I wonder if you would have gotten in trouble with the vision-impaired population if Lois had said, for instance, "That's funny... you're clearly blind!" Then again, I wonder if the vision-impaired community reads comics. This is something to ponder at a later time.

Just one other note: It's good to see that Lois has changed. I assume that Hi and Lois depicts the day-to-day life, and not necessarily the hour-by-hour life, of the family. To see her wearing the same thing the past two days made me wonder about her wardrobe, or if the family was perhaps on a tight laundry-and-new-clothing budget. It's good to see personal hygiene is still one of Lois's focuses.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY FOUR:

8/7/02
Mr. Walker,

I apologize for not providing you with commentary over the weekend, which I trust you have by now accepted as an Orwellian guiding light, of sorts. ("Big Brother" was always too familial). Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Revelation in a bottle."

In today's strip, Lois expresses her disapproval of what she calls "Miracle Drugs," while looking at a bottle of Sneezex. The ad claims that it is 100% effective against allergies, but Lois has another interpretation: "They DISclaim more than they claim!"

When Lois says this, a very peculiar thing happens. She does not just proclaim her distrust, but literally thrusts it -- and the bottle, as well -- into Hi's face. In response, Hi looks rather guilty. Not shocked, not elated, not bothered or confused or amused or, really, anything besides guilty. His eyes roll up, his mouth is turned down, and he looks like he just sat on a birthday cake. Why is he guilty, I must wonder?

My assumption has two roads, and the first is the more reasonable. The couple is in a store called "Dollar Drugs," and I think we all have been suffering from high drug costs lately. Over-the-counter drugs are a fortune, leaving the general population with a decision between sneezing and going bankrupt. And forget about prescription drugs. If you're not paying out the buttocks for irritable bowel syndrome medication, you're wondering why your co-worker is always in the bathroom. Hi is trying to cut a few corners by going to Dollar Drugs, and clearly Lois is perturbed by his stinginess. Is Mr. Moneybags and Mr. Honeybags intrinsically linked?

The other option, of course, is that Hi is secretly working in the discount pharmaceutical industry, where he writes legal disclaimers. What irony that would be, but clearly too simple. I expect from the strip more complex -- and, to boot, receive more complex -- messages than that.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY FIVE:

8/8/02
Mr. Walker,

Confusing strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Lois creates coffee and confusion."

In today's strip, Lois is sitting down and drinking coffee with a friend, and the friend compliments Lois on the coffee. Lois says it is her "special blend," but then launches into a guilt-infused internal monologue: "...of six different nearly empty bags of coffee I found in the back of a cabinet!"

Lois says "a cabinet," which is surprisingly vague. Had she taken it out of her kitchen cabinet, I suppose, she would have thought, "my kitchen cabinet." Even "the cabinet" would have offered more direction, but "a cabinet" sounds like she found this cabinet in the middle of the street. Or the middle of the woods. Or, really, wherever a cabinet is least likely to be, Lois was somehow there.

Is Lois to be trusted, sneaking through the seedy underbelly of discarded cabinets, a veritable graveyard of forgotten furniture, looking for just the right amount of coffee bags? Is this the Lois we know and love? Judging by the second panel, in which her friend is virtually transfixed and perhaps drugged by the coffee, I must assume this is not that same Lois. In fact, are you even the same Mr. Walker from last week? Last week's Mr. Walker responded to me. Today's Mr. Walker does not, and I must confess, today's strip gives me the chills.

What is Lois up to? What is in that coffee? Why does she have dots for eyes when she's talking, but eggs for eyes when she's thinking? Today's strip makes me wonder what is left in the world that is still decent and good, if not Lois and untainted caffeine. Today's strip makes me want someone to hug, to tell me it will all be ok, to read to me a story I know very well.

I wonder when I can shake all this off, and when life can return to normal. Lois has become larger than life -- certainly, at least, larger than I.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

--------------------------

Sadly, that was all. I got one response from Greg, and it confirmed my worst fears: he really does believe in his comic strip. I suppose it's nice to take pride in your work, and i do commend him (and, if he ever reads this, thank him) for putting up with those unsolicited e-mails and responding, on that one fateful day, with good humor. But, i fear that Mort, Greg, and the rest of the gang have no idea that the rest of the world does not live in happy suburban homes, or that sometimes the guys in the army have to actually go out and murder people.

I suppose they could argue that those horrors do indeed exist, and their strips are an escape from life's harsher realities. They could say that life isn't all bad, and surely they'd be right.

But, if that's the case, then i must implore: please, at least try to make them funny.