Since he’s a kid, there’s only one explanation for how he lost an eye: he shot himself in the eye with a BB gun! 
The one-eyed look worked for Odin. He traded one eye for a drink.
Of course, it was a drink from the fountain of wisdom …
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
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Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
How did Bazooka Joe lose his right eye? (22-Nov-1996)
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
If Bazooka Joe really has two healthy eyes, then it stands to reason that, when not appearing in the strip, he either <a> wears the patch on his left eye instead, or <b> dispenses with it altogether. (Then again, if <b>, how can he be sure the cartoonist won’t catch him at a moment when he has his patch off?)
(note: the subject of this post refers to a duplicate post removed by the moderator)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 10-17-2000 at 11:06 AM]
Excuse my ignorance, but why is he called Bazooka Joe in the first place? I would haved guessed he had put his eye out playing with a Bazooka rather than a BB gun, but I never saw him use a Bazooka in the strip.
forgive my ignorance, but who are Brenda Starr and her
paramour Basil St. John?
Generations of mothers have informed their children that they will either put their eyes out, or break their necks, doing that (“that”, in this context, may be taken to be anything more active than breathing).
Since Bazooka Joe is evidently alive and not a quadriplegic, we can only conclude that he injured himself, perhaps whilst running with scissors, sometime in his past.
Brenda Starr was the star of a comic strip that flourished in the '70s but now seems long gone. She was a glamourous redheaded reporter. (Actually, though I must have read it almost every week, I don’t really remember Basil St John either.)
Brenda Starr is still being published by Tribune Media Services, (see a current strip at http://brenda.comicspage.com/ ) though her creator, Dale Messick, retired in 1980. A terrible movie, starring Brooke Shields (as Brenda) and Timothy Dalton (as Basil) was released in 1989. (I think this is one of those movies that sat on the shelf for more than a year because the studio thought it was terrible. They were right.) In the strip, Basil was a dashing, dark-haired romantic adventurer.
Born in 1906, Dale Messick found it necessary to change her name, Dalia, to a more masculine one in order to get publishers to consider her work. It wasn’t so very long ago that people thought women could not draw.
I haven’t heard of Bazooka Joe in years. Here is a Bazooka Joe website.
jab1, the Brenda Starr web page to which you provided a link has a biography of Basil St. John, in which I learned the following interesting information:
Basil St. John has an eyepatch? Could it bet that Basil St. John and Bazooka Joe are (twilight zone music) the same person :eek:? I feel a new urban legend coming on.
DaveoRad, the Brenda Starr web site also says that when Brenda married Basil in 1976, it «was an event that made national news and well-wishers included Ann Landers, Miss Manners and then President and Mrs. Gerald Ford.» How could you forget Basil?
Is this thread about Brenda Starr or Bazooka Joe? Let’s get back to basics.
What does Bazooka Joe have to do with bazookas? What does Bazooka Gum have to do with bazookas? Are they named after the antitank weapon or the musical instrument?
There’s a musical instrument called a bazooka?
Or do you mean “Bassoon Joe”?
It was a homemade instrument made and played (and named) by Bob Burns, a comedian in the 1930s. See here for details.
The musical bazooka was also mentioned in a recent article in GAMES– It was a sort of kazoo. Apparently, the big gun was named after the instrument, and not vice-versa.
Ah, Brenda Starr, my idol . . . It was because of her that I became a Girl Reporter (and, briefly, a redhead). Always liked the fact that she lived in the Lovely Arms Apartments.
She and I also shared a similar love life. “Gee, I’d really love to go to dinner tonight, Brenda, but . . . Ummm . . . I gotta go find the black orchid serum in far-off Costa Ragua. Yeah, that’s it—black orchid serum!”
Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time I got THAT story from a guy . . .
Wow, who’d a thunk it, a musical instrument called a bazooka, and it was the source of the name for the weapon.
The really ironic part - I used to live just across the river from Van Buren, Arkansas, and I’d never heard of that Burns guy.
There’s a musical instrument called a bazooka?
[/QUOTE]
It was a homemade instrument made and played (and named) by Bob Burns, a comedian in the 1930s. See here for details. **
[/QUOTE]
Thanks, dtilque, I remembered there was an instrument, and that the weapon was named for it, but had forgotten the details. But I had always assumed the name was a variant of “bazouki” (I’m sure you all know what a bazouki is) rather than “bazoo,” as the Burns article has it.
There was another character in the Bazooka Joe comics named, if memory serves, Mortimer. He always had his sweater pulled up over his mouth and nose. Was the author of this comic strip prone to gimmicks to make his characters interesting? What was Mortimer hiding?
Alright, I’ll ask the question. Why does :::swoon:::Basil St.John wear an eyepatch?
PS: I found the movie Brenda Starr one day at the video store ( It is very hard to find because the movie was never released in the US. Only in Asia, I believe.) and was expecting it to really suck. What I found was a cute little flick that if I were an 8 year old girl having a sleep over, it was a nice alternative to “Grease”. If I looked at it as an adult, well, it’s right up there with “The Phantom” with Billy Zane.
I explained it in my post above. Basil St. John was an aka of Joe Bazooka.