Doonesbury Totally Explained

Everything about Doonesbury totally explained

Doonesbury is a comic strip by G. B. Trudeau that chronicles the adventures and lives of a vast array of different characters, of different ages, professions, and backgrounds — from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, now a struggling, middle aged, remarried father.
Frequently political in nature, Doonesbury features characters professing a range of affiliations, but the cartoon’s editorial slant is primarily noted for a liberal outlook. The name "Doonesbury" is a combination of the word doone (1960s prep school slang for "someone unafraid to appear foolish") and the surname of Charles Pillsbury, Trudeau's roommate at Yale University.

History

Doonesbury began as a continuation of Bull Tales, which appeared in the Yale University student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, beginning September, 1968. It focused on local campus events at Yale. The executive editor of the paper in the late 1960s, Reed Hundt, who later served as the chairman of the FCC, noted that the Daily News had a flexible policy about publishing cartoons: “We publish[ed] pretty much anything.”
   As Doonesbury, the strip debuted as a daily strip in about two dozen newspapers on October 26, 1970 -- the first strip from Universal Press Syndicate. A Sunday strip began on March 21, 1971. Many of the early strips were reprints of the Bull Tales cartoons, with some changes to the drawings and plots. BD’s helmet changed from having a “Y” (for Yale) to a star (for the fictional Walden College). Mike and BD started Doonesbury as roommates; they were not roommates in the original. Doonesbury became well known for its social and political (usually liberal) commentary, always timely, and peppered with wry and ironic humor. It is presently syndicated in approximately 1,400 newspapers worldwide. The decision, on September 12, 2005 to drop Doonesbury from The Guardian (United Kingdom) was reversed less than 24 hours later, after the strip’s followers voiced strong discontent.
   Like Li‘l Abner and Pogo before it, Doonesbury blurred the distinction between editorial cartoon and the funny pages. In May of 1975, the strip won Trudeau a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, the first strip cartoon to be so honored. That month, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, the publishers of collections of Doonesbury until the mid-1980s took out an ad in the New York Times Book Review, marking the occasion by saying: It’s nice for Trudeau and Doonesbury to be so honored, “but it’s quite another thing when the Establishment clutches all of Walden Commune to its bosom.” That same year, then-U.S. President Gerald Ford acknowledged the stature of the comic strip, telling the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association at their annual dinner, “There are only three major vehicles to keep us informed as to what is going on in Washington: the electronic media, the print media, and Doonesbury—not necessarily in that order.”
   In 1977, Trudeau wrote a script for a twenty-six-minute animated “special.” A Doonesbury Special was produced and directed by Trudeau, along with John Hubley (who died during the storyboarding stage) and Faith Hubley. The Special was first broadcast by NBC on November 27, 1977. It won a Special Jury Award at the Cannes International Film Festival for best short film, and received an Academy Award nomination (for best animated short film), both in 1978. In its 2003 series “John Kerry: A Candidate in the Making” on the 2004 presidential race, the Boston Globe reprinted and discussed 1971 Doonesbury cartoons of the young Kerry’s Vietnam War protest speeches.

Characters

Doonesbury has a large group of recurring characters, with 24 of them currently listed on the cast list at the strip’s website. There, it notes that “readers new to Doonesbury sometimes experience a temporary bout of character shock,” as the sheer number of characters—and the historical connections among them—can be overwhelming.
The main characters of the strip are a group who attended the fictional Walden College during the strip’s first twelve years. In April 1972, a sub-group of these characters started their own commune, and moved in together. The original “Walden Commune” residents were: Mike Doonesbury, Zonker Harris, Mark Slackmeyer, Nicole, Bernie and DiDi. Zonker was soon given “Walden Puddle” to reflect in, and the residents of Walden Commune changed over time. In September 1972, Joanie Caucus joined the comic, meeting Mike and Mark in Colorado, and eventually moved into the commune. They were later joined by BD and his girlfriend (later wife) Boopsie. Nicole, DiDi, and Bernie were phased out, both as characters and as residents of the commune. The spouses of this group became important following this group’s graduation; they're JJ Caucus (Mike’s now-ex-wife) and Rick Redfern (Joanie’s husband). Mike remarried, to Kim Rosenthal, a Vietnamese refugee who had been adopted by a Jewish-American family just after the fall of Saigon and whose first words as an infant in the strip had been “Big Mac.” Uncle Duke and Roland Hedley have also appeared often, frequently in unconnected, more topical settings. In more recent years, a second generation of characters has taken prominence as it has grown up to college-age; this group consists of Jeff Redfern (Rick and Joanie’s son), Zipper Harris (Zonker’s nephew), and Alex Doonesbury (Mike and JJ’s daughter).

Milestones

Doonesbury delved into a number of political and social issues, causing controversies, and breaking new ground on the comics pages. Among the milestones:

A November 1972 strip depicting Zonker telling a little boy in a sandbox a fairy tale ending in the protagonist being awarded “his weight in fine, uncut Turkish hashish” raised an uproar.

During the Watergate scandal, one strip showed Mark on the radio with a “Watergate profile” of John Mitchell, declaring him “Guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!!” A number of newspapers removed the strip and one, The Washington Post, even ran an editorial criticizing the cartoon. Following Nixon's death in 1994, the strip was re-run with all the instances of the word "guilty" crossed out and replaced with "flawed," lampooning the media's apparent glossing-over of his image in the wake of his death.

In June 1973, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes dropped Doonesbury for being too political. The strip was quickly reinstated after hundreds of protests by readers, who were soldiers in the U.S. Army.

September 1973: The Lincoln Journal became the first newspaper to move Doonesbury to its editorial page.

In February 1976, Andy Lippincott, a classmate of Joanie’s, told her that he was gay. Dozens of papers opted not to publish the storyline, with Miami Herald editor Larry Jinks saying, “We just decided we weren’t ready for homosexuality in a comic strip.”

In November 1976, when the storyline included the blossoming romance of Rick Redfern and Joanie Caucus, four days of strips were devoted to a transition from one apartment to another, ending with a view of the two together in bed, marking the first time any nationally run comic strip portrayed premarital sex in this fashion. Again, the strip was removed from the comics pages of a number of newspapers.

In June 1978, one strip included a coupon listing various politicians and dollar amounts allegedly taken from Korean lobbyists, to be clipped and glued to a postcard to be sent to the Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, resulting in an overflow of mail to the Speaker's office.

In August 1979, Trudeau took a three-week vacation from the strip, which was uncommon among comic strip writers and artists.

From January 1983 through September 1984, the strip wasn't published so that Trudeau could bring the strip to Broadway.

In June 1985, a series of strips included photos of Frank Sinatra associating with a number of people with mafia connections, one alongside text from President Ronald Reagan’s speech awarding Sinatra the Medal of Freedom.

In January 1987, politicians were again declared “Guilty, guilty, guilty.” This time it was Donald Regan, John Poindexter and Oliver North, referring to their roles in the Iran-Contra Affair.

In June 1989, several days’ comics (which had already been drawn and written) had to be replaced with repeats, due to the humor of the strips being considered in bad taste in light of the mass murder of democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Trudeau himself asked for the recall. This was despite an interview published with Universal Press Syndicate’s Editorial Director, Lee Salem, in the 28 May 1989 San Jose Mercury News in which Salem stated his hopes the strips could still be used.

In May 1990, the storyline included the death of Andy Lippincott, who succumbed to AIDS.

In November 1991, a series of strips appeared to give credibility to a real-life prison inmate who said that former Vice-President Dan Quayle had connections with drug dealers; the strip sequence was dropped by some two dozen newspapers, in part because the allegations had been investigated and dispelled previously.(Six years later, the reporter who broke the Quayle story some weeks after the Doonesbury cartoons later published a book saying he no longer believed the story had been true.)

In December 1992, Working Woman magazine named two characters (Joanie Caucus and Lacey Davenport) as role models for women.

In November 1993, a story line dealing with California wildfires was dropped from several California newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

In June 1994, the Roman Catholic Church took issue with a series of strips dealing with the book Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell. A few newspapers dropped single strips from the series, and the Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois, refused to run the entire series.

In March 1995, John McCain denounced Trudeau on the floor of the Senate: “Suffice it to say that I hold Trudeau in utter contempt.” This was in response to a strip about Bob Dole’s strategy of exploiting his war record in his presidential campaign. The quotation was used on the cover of Trudeau’s book Doonesbury Nation. (McCain and Trudeau later made peace: McCain wrote the foreword to The Long Road Home, Trudeau’s collection of comic strips dealing with BD’s leg amputation during the second Iraq war.)

Later in 1995 Mark Slackmeyer, a gay character from the strip, was seen in the final days of Berkeley Breathed’s comic Outland heading off with a main character from that series, Steve Dallas.

In February 1998, a strip dealing with Bill Clinton’s sex scandal was removed from the comics pages of a number of newspapers because it included the phrases “oral sex” and “semen-streaked dress.”

In November 2000, a strip wasn't run in some newspapers when Duke says of then-Presidential candidate George W. Bush: “He’s got a history of alcohol abuse and cocaine.”

In September 2001, a strip perpetuated the Internet hoax that claimed George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president in the last 50 years, half that of Bill Clinton. When caught repeating the hoax, Trudeau apologized for “unsettling anyone who was under the impression that the President is, in fact, quite intelligent.”

In 2003 a cartoon that publicized the recent medical research suggesting a connection between masturbation and a reduced risk of prostate cancer, with one character alluding to the practice as “self-dating,” wasn't run in many papers; pre-publication sources indicated that as many as half of the 700 papers to which it was syndicated were planning not to run the strip.

February 2004: Trudeau used his strip to make the apparently genuine offer of USD$10,000 (to the USO in the winner’s name) for anyone who can personally confirm that George W. Bush was actually present during a part of his service in the National Guard. Reuters and CNN reported by the end of that week that despite 1,300 responses, no credible evidence had been offered; as of 2006, the offer remains unclaimed.

April 2004: On April 21, after nearly 34 years, readers finally saw BD’s head without some sort of helmet. In the same strip, it was revealed that he'd lost a leg in the Iraq War. Later that month, after awakening and discovering his situation, BD exclaims “SON OF A BITCH!!!” The single strip was removed from many papers—including the Boston Globe—although in others, such as Newsday, the offending word was replaced by a line. The Dallas Morning News ran the cartoon uncensored, with a footnote that the editor believed profanity was appropriate, given the subject matter. An image of BD with amputated leg also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone that summer (issue 954).

May 2004: two Sunday strips were published containing only the names of soldiers killed in the War in Iraq. Further such lists were printed in May 2005, May/June 2006 and 2007.

On 7 March 2005, the series began a sequence memorializing the death by suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, the inspiration for the character of Duke. In the sequence, Duke’s head explodes upon reading the news; in an unusual development, no newspapers are known to have refused to print that day’s strip. Trudeau indicated in a news story that one reason for this willingness may have been that the character had a history of similar events: “I’ve been exploding Duke’s head as far back as 1985,” he said.

In June 2005, Trudeau came out with The Long Road Home, a book devoted to BD’s recovery from his loss of a leg in Iraq. Although Trudeau opposed the Iraq War, the foreword was written by Sen. John McCain, a supporter of the war. Proceeds from the book, and its sequel The War Within, benefit Fisher House, the generic name for homes where families of injured soldiers may stay near where they're recovering, also known as “the military equivalent of Ronald McDonald House.”

July 2005: Several newspapers declined to run two strips in which George W. Bush refers to his adviser Karl Rove as “Turd Blossom,” a nickname Bush has been reported to use for Rove.

In September 2005 when the British newspaper The Guardian relaunched in a smaller format, Doonesbury was dropped due to space considerations. After a flood of complaints the strip was reinstated with an omnibus covering the issues missed and a full apology.

The strips scheduled to run from 31 October to 5 November 2005 and a Sunday strip scheduled for 13 November about the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court were withdrawn suddenly after her nomination was. The strips have been posted on the official website, and were replaced by re-runs by the syndicate.

Trudeau sought input from readers as to where Alex Doonesbury should attend college in a 15 May 2006 straw cyber-poll at Doonesbury.com. Voters chose among MIT, Rensselaer, and Cornell. Students from Rensselaer and then MIT hacked the system, which was designed to limit each computer to one vote. In the end, voters logged 175,000 votes, with MIT grabbing 48% of the total. The Doonesbury Town Hall FAQ stated that given that the rules of the poll hadn't ruled out such methods, “the will, chutzpah, and bodacious craft of the voting public will be respected,” declaring that Alex will be attending MIT.

Criticism

conservatives have intensely criticized Doonesbury. Several examples are cited in the Milestones section. The strip has also met criticism from its readers almost since it began syndicated publication. For example, when Lacey Davenport’s husband Dick, in the last moments before his death, calls on God, several conservative pundits called the strip blasphemous. The sequence of Dick Davenport’s final bird-watching and fatal heart attack was run in November 1986. Doonesbury has angered, irritated, or been rebuked by many of the political figures that have appeared or been referred to in the strip over the years. Outspoken critics have included members of every US Presidential administration since Richard Nixon’s. A 1984 series of strips showing then Vice President George H.W. Bush placing his manhood in a blind trust—in parody of Bush’s using that financial instrument to fend off concerns that his governmental decisions would be influenced by his investment holdings—brought the politician to complain, “Doonesbury’s carrying water for the opposition. Trudeau is coming out of deep left field.” There have also been other politicians who didn't view the way that Doonesbury portrayed them very favorably, including former U.S. House Speaker Thomas Tip O’Neill and former California Governor Jerry Brown.
   The strip has also met controversy over every military conflict it has dealt with, including Vietnam, Grenada, Panama and both Gulf Wars. When Doonesbury ran the names of soldiers who had died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, conservative commentators accused Trudeau of using the American dead to make a profit for himself, and again demanded that the strip be removed from newspapers.
   After many letter writing campaigns demanding the removal of the strip were unsuccessful, conservatives changed their tactics, and instead of writing to newspaper editors, they began writing to one of the printers who prints the color Sunday comics. In 2005, Continental Features gave in to their demands, and refused to continue printing the Sunday Doonesbury, causing it to disappear from the 38 Sunday papers that Continental Features printed. Of the 38, only one newspaper The Anniston Star in Anniston, Alabama, continued to carry the Sunday Doonesbury, though of necessity in black and white.
   Some newspapers have dealt with the criticism by moving the strip from the comics page to the editorial page, because many people believe that a politically based comic strip like Doonesbury doesn't belong in a traditionally child-friendly comics section. The Lincoln Journal started the trend in 1973. In some papers (such as the Tulsa World) Doonesbury appears on the opinions page alongside Mallard Fillmore, a politically conservative comic strip.

Awards and honors

In 1975 the strip won Trudeau a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, the first strip cartoon to be so honored. It was also a Nominated Finalist in 1990, 2004, and 2005.

Trudeau received “Certificates of Achievement” from the US Army 4th Battalion 67th Armor Regiment and the Ready First Brigade in 1991 for his comic strips dealing with the first Gulf War. The texts of these citations are quoted on the back of the comic strip collection Welcome to Club Scud!

Trudeau won the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1995. (External Link

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Trudeau was awarded the US Army’s Commander’s Award for Public Service in 2006 for his series of strips about BD’s recovery following the loss of his leg in Iraq. (External Link

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