TOON TALK

Welcome Jo Yo: Mort Walker will celebrate the 40th anniversary of his comic strip “Beetle Bailey” Tuesday by adding a new character to the staff at Camp Swampy: Japanese-American Cpl. Joe (Kashikoi) Yo. The character’s middle name means “smart and clever” in Japanese. “We felt the time had come to include an Asian-American in our cast,” Walker said. When the strip premiered on Sept. 4, 1950, the title character in “Beetle Bailey” was a goof-off college student; he mistakenly enlisted in the Army during the Korean War and has remained in the service ever since.