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Beetle Bailey may be well-loved, but he’s what the Pentagon calls “legacy technology” — a laugh-delivery system left over from an era before today’s joint, net-centric military and its wired, Web-savvy service members. Ink-on-paper cartoons, like many legacy systems, still are useful, but you’ll find few new-generation military gagsmiths in your newspaper. Now, of course, they’re online.
For the cost of a domain name and some computer gear, military cartoonists can deliver jokes and characters tailored to an audience of fellow service members who’ll laugh at things that might produce blank stares from civilians.
Take 1st Lt. Ken Dahl, star of “Air Force Blues,” available online at http://www.afblues.com. The fictional F-15 aviator wears an “I’m a fighter pilot” T-shirt for days when his flight suit is in the wash. His most hated enemy: The MQ-1 Predator, which deigns to do an Eagle’s work.
Dahl and “Blues” are the work of Staff Sgt. Austin May, a public affairs specialist at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.
“What I like best about it is, it’s not being done right now,” May said of drawing an Air Force Web comic. “A lot of people have done them in the past, and they’ve had great success with them, but this niche wasn’t being filled.”
May first forayed into the Web comic world with “AWACker,” based on his experience as an E-3 aircrew member at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; the comic still can be seen at http://www.chairforce.com. His new comic is more inclusive of the whole Air Force and is similar in its Web presence to the popular gamer comic “Penny Arcade,” complete with loyal forum-goers.
“Air Force Blues” and “Penny Arcade” inspired another military Web comic, “Anchors Away,” drawn by a Navy F/A-18 Hornet pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Tim Lockhart — in fact, Lockhart credits May for coming up with the “Anchors” name. Online at http://www.navycomic.com, “Anchors Away” takes its inspiration from Lockhart’s daily life in the Navy and from readers’ e-mailed suggestions.

armytimes.com