BALTIMORE (AP) -- Comic creator Mort Walker knew he was on to something when he brought a computer technician into Beetle Bailey's world and asked fans for their input.

He got 84,324 replies -- mostly e-mails, of course.

Walker, who started drawing Beetle, Gen. Halftrack and Sarge in 1950, soon understood just how much computers have permeated our lives. Many fans had ideas for gags, including the old joke of struggling for hours to repair a computer that -- surprise! -- is unplugged.

Walker thought he could come up with a new cache of jokes, all centered on the frustrations of figuring out upgrades, gadgets, CD-ROMs and Internet surfing.

And he was looking for a new character who would epitomize the expanding technology. So he asked readers to submit names, and he came up with a winner: "Chip Gizmo" will appear July 4 at Camp Swampy. [...]

He found the techs to be earnestly nerdy, proud of their jobs and their work, he said. However, the king of Army pranks discovered that these military employees did not necessarily want to be made into a joke.

So Walker shifted his concept of Army Specialist Chip Gizmo, making him more of a likable character than an annoying know-it-all. And he gave him lots of gadgets. Spiky-haired, cross-eyed, rumpled Gizmo appears with phone antennae, curling wires and earpieces poking out of his Army fatigues.

He's around 30 and will live in his own world -- with a mind swirling in cyberspace. At the same time, the other characters will live more like Walker, reflecting the generations of World War II and Korea.

"I have so many friends like this -- no matter how many times you explain to them -- they have this blank expression on their face," Walker, 78, said in an interview from his home in Stamford, Conn.

So goes the humor that will follow Chip Gizmo into Camp Swampy, as the computer specialist faces off with old-fashioned Gen. Halftrack. For example, when Gizmo warns Halftrack not to use his pop-out CD-ROM holder for a coffee cup holder, the general relents. Next, Gizmo finds him using it to hold his martini glass. [...]