I Love Doonesbury

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/marmaduke/archive/images/marmaduke2004261470701.gif

The latest storyline has easily been the best in a long time -- he seems to do best now when he has something to focus on.

(To think what a player I would've been if I'd just asked the Apartment 3G questions instead.)

Here's the joke: Marmaduke is a big dog! Garfield is a lazy cat! Cathy is neurotic and overweight! And the Family Circus doesn't even MAKE jokes.

What happened to comics like Calvin and Hobbes (which i agree is the best ever), The Far Side, and Bloom County? Doonesbury is now one of only a very few that doesn't blow egregiously every single day. Can anyone think of any others?

Is Opus still around? It wasn't carried in any paper I can get here without paying out the ear.

xpost; the reason I wanted to know what Doonesbury was about is because I thought Zonker looked cool :) And it's been weird going back and reading strips that are familiar and realizing there's no way I would have understood them even with explanations.

Bloom County/Outland/Opus has not aged well with me.

I got all of the '70s and '80s Doonesbury collections at used book sales, they were fundamental to any interest in politics on my part. (And probably why I hate Richard Nixon more than anyone born in the '80s has the right to.)

That's for goddamn sure.

"YES NOW! INTO YOUR TURN!"

"Now, Harris, I put my pants on two legs at a time just like any other..."

Still, Zonker, Mark Slackmeyer and B.D. will forever be dear to me.

Roland the reporter: "Oh wow, together?"

I miss Jimmy Thudpucker.

Gasoline Alley holds that record I think -- been running since the twenties or something?

As far as the new Calvin and Hobbes, it'd probably be somewhere in between Get Fuzzy and Mutts, if it was actually out there right now. Mutts got the humanism, and Get Fuzzy got the nasty streak. I still love Mutts despite its semi-regular ventures into saccharine sentimentality, because McDonnell has a great grounding in all of the classic strips, which is definitely something that gets more of a chance to come out in the design of his Sunday strips. Sometimes I enjoy just looking at the design even more than reading the strip itself.

Doonesbury is still great too, to be on-topic for a second. This story arc has been pretty amazing.

I'm surprised to hear people talk of Calvin & Hobbes. I used to be crazy about that one, but I don't think the paper here gets it so if it's still going I haven't read it in like 10 years. I remember trying to share my love of it with my dad and he was baffled, but eventually he started to love it.

OTM, though i reread the first book a few months ago and it was still hysterically funny - espec. the one where Opus encounters the Hare Krishna guy.

best comic strip ever = Krazy Kat, closely followed by Peanuts. I think Trudeau and Watterson would both agree with me on that!

Alex at MIT: still awesome

get back from vacation, you lazy Quebecois!

I believe he's taking more than a vacation

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20081121

I'd forgotten how awesome Lacey was.

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090120

loooooool

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090212

no massive lolz, but lol nonetheless

Is that the first Doonesbury with an actualy gag?

arg! Akchewal

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090321

Makes up for two weeks of fucking roland hedley's twitter nonsense.

haha speaking of Roland Hedley's Twitter nonsense:

http://twitter.com/Roland_Hedley

Alex is a grad student according to today's Sunday strip -- when did that happen? Thought she was MIT undergrad?

like 4 years ago!

The time sure does pass.

AKA I'm getting old. ._.

Wait, Alex is Mike's kid, right? Seriously, I'm still in "They're finally back from their hiatus! Boy, I bet Trudeau's pissed about Bloom County!" mode.

Buuuuuurn: http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/07/10

Starting Monday: Doonesbury takes on Texas ultrasound law.

I keep meaning to add Doonesbury to my daily reading but honestly forget it still exists when this thread isn't bumped.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics.html

I always forget to look at it on Slate. I started reading it again in newsprint on the Washington Post comics page. The W. Post used to feature it, bigger, on a separate page in their Style section, but now its just another comic (again)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/the-doonesbury-interview-garry-trudeau-says-to-ignore-abortion-debate-would-have-been-comedy-malpractice/2012/03/09/gIQAjTHy1R_blog.html

Texas's HB-15 isn't hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.

Trudeau otmfm.

Not the lolziest or beard-strokingest response but I like Ruben Bolling and I like Garry Trudeau.

http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/05/01?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+uclick%2Ftomthedancingbug+%28Tom+the+Dancing+Bug+-+GoComics.com%29

for posterity's sake, here's the strip referenced in the original post:

http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2004/07/01

came up today in my feed (i think all the dailies are reruns now) - felt exceptionally dark

http://assets.amuniversal.com/103fe7100978013462ef005056a9545d

Having a blast re-reading the 70s collections. They were essential education back in the day. Phred, Honey, Ginny & Clyde, MacArthur, etc ... Trudeau wrote his supporting cast very well.

Devoured those volumes in my late teens and agree totally - all those characters are still sharp in my memory. Would love to plop down someday and reread the whole strip in order, the long-term soap opera and sense of caring about the characters is remarkable for a strip you'd expect would just be full of reductive allegorical figures who are just there to facilitate political or otherwise topical gags.

("my late teens" = 20 years ago, to be clear)

They finally released a proper complete (digital) edition a few weeks ago.

Ooooh that's appealing. I used to have the CD-ROM, but it was one of those annoying things where it only installed a dinky viewer program and you had to hang on to the disc and pop it in to actually view anything....

I had that CD-ROM as well. Just super annoying. That @50 collection looking very tempting.

Anyone ever hear the Jimmy Thudpucker Greatest Hits album from 1977? I picked up a copy recently, listening to it for the first time right now. Seems like exceedingly generic 1977 pop-rock - a little too aggressive in places to be Yacht (though the Porcaro-Lukather credits suggest otherwise), or even the laid-back country-folk sound I pictured for the guy. Plausible as something he might have arrived at under label pressure by that point in time. I'm someone who can just enjoy the lushness of this era so it's cool. But for the record, I'm not hearing a single, Jimmy.

But like... what a weird project, right?

a lot of these tracks could pass as demos for Elton's Blue Moves with a less distinctive vocalist filling in.

Trying to track down a Doonesbury strip and googling has got me nowhere. It's a weekday strip with each panel showing a character's reaction to a surprise birthday party at different points in his life. For example, for the birthday party at age 20, his reaction is something along the lines of "oh wow - this is totally groovy you guys!" but by the time he gets to 40, his reaction is just a stern "everybody out!" I'm pretty sure the character was Rick Redfern, probably and 80s or 90s strip.

an

I can't remember if I've ever actually seen that, but based on the description I can totally draw it in my head. I'd buy it as a Mark or Mike strip also. Sorry, this is not helpful!

Holy shit, I found it.

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1992/08/22

Sleuthed it out from this google search result: https://books.google.com/books?id=kC1aiBNgK2QC&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=rick+redfern+birthday&source=bl&ots=F27BsKx_ny&sig=ACfU3U0VC70NSTPQe6wDLnK4FFzcuVSOig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM45ye15P3AhUqUt8KHVOZBG0Q6AF6BAgSEAM#v=onepage&q=rick%20redfern%20birthday&f=false

I've never been a fan but cycled through some of the strips after the 1992 birthday strip, and they were a *lot* better than I was expecting. What's a good era to dabble in?

I'm sure this is a common crit, but it feels like the quieter 2nd and 3rd panel jokes & asides are generally funnier than the punchlines.

I feel like if you like those early 90s strips, you might try out the post-hiatus period (October 1984 onward) which is similar in visual style and tone. But I haven't actually gone back through to see how well that period holds up.

I also feel like the best way to read Doonesbury probably is in order from, more or less, the beginning... the later soap-opera turns do trade on built-up affection for the characters. I originally read it through the big multi-year anthologies; they turn out to have been very highly abridged, but they worked for me as a teen. I feel like it might get a little rough clicking through every single scrappy college strip from the early 70s though. My advice is scoop up cheap old copies of The Doonesbury Chronicles and Doonesbury's Greatest Hits - those cover most of the 1970s, when the strip rose to fame and glory.

"I feel like" a lot of things about Doonesbury, it seems.

I had to replace my tattered Doonesbury Chronicles last winter and was surprised that I could find hardcover editions in decent shape for like $20-$30 bucks.

My dad had a lot of the small paperback collections back in the 70s. I especially enjoyed "Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!"

I haven't read the strip since the Reagan years. I'm tempted to dive back in, but I'm afraid it would just depress me.

Peace, man - I know the exact strip you mean.

Yeah, look above - I found it!

Stumbled across this as a result of this thread, looks like a nice deep dive:

Reading Doonesbury

^good find, thanks. i read 2 of their older posts - they did a good job providing historical context & thoughtful commentary

wow, the one on death in the strip got to me. that Dick Davenport sequence is one of Trudeau's finest moments.