Why have him lose a leg?
To dramatize the sacrifices our troops were making in our names. I briefly considered killing B.D. off. Instead, I gave him a serious wound and committed myself to following that story through his recovery. Were you looking for a way to get his helmet off, which he has worn since the cartoon began in 1970? No, I did that on impulse. But once I did it, I realized that it greatly enhanced the pathos of the reveal. Yes, he was missing his leg, but what was nearly as shocking to readers was that he was missing a signature part of his persona-the headgear. I was trying to convey the sense that nothing would ever again be the same. You spent a lot of time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. What struck you most about the amputees? The soldiers are almost all hellbent on putting their lives back together. There’s not a culture of complaint. So many of them want nothing more than to get back to their units. That’s an unreasonable goal for most, but that aspiration is front a
