Grandpa pissed his pants again He don't give a damn Brother Billy has both guns drawn He ain't been right since Vietnam -- Warren Zevon, “Play it All Night Long.” On 30 April 1975, the last Americans and some of their South Vietnamese allies were evacuated from the United States embassy compound as Saigon – … Continue reading Vietnam, the Aftermath: Part I, the Refugees.
Category: Long Strange Trip
“Just Some Silly Dame”: Boopsie Takes a Stand.
In a previous post, I discussed how the 1971 arrival of Nicole as a semi-regular cast member signaled an important shift in Garry Trudeau’s approach to writing about women. Before Nicole joined the cast, women in Doonesbury were either sexpots who existed solely to fulfill adolescent sexual fantasies or pathetic figures to be ridiculed because … Continue reading “Just Some Silly Dame”: Boopsie Takes a Stand.
Selling Reagan to Black Voters: Doonesbury in the 1980s
Last year, I decided to re-read the complete run of Doonesbury and write about the strip in order to better understand both Trudeau’s work and its times and to start learning about the language and aesthetics of comics more generally. A year later, I’m about halfway through the strips (I just finished 1997), but I’m … Continue reading Selling Reagan to Black Voters: Doonesbury in the 1980s
“Welcome, You Dumb Honky.” Race in the Early Doonesbury Strips, Part II: Rufus
In my last “Long Strange Trip” post, I looked at how Garry Trudeau wrote about Black radicalism in the early 1970s, focusing on the character of Calvin and Trudeau's depiction of the 1971 New Haven trial of nine members of the Black Panther Party for the murder of a suspected FBI informant. When Trudeau wrote … Continue reading “Welcome, You Dumb Honky.” Race in the Early Doonesbury Strips, Part II: Rufus
He’s Black, He’s Beautiful, and by Gosh, He’s Angry: Race in the Early Doonesbury Strips, Part I.
My last three “Long Strange Trip” posts have looked at how Doonesbury treated the Vietnam War during the first few years of its run, starting with B.D’s experience in ROTC through his decision to enlist and his encounter with Phred the Vietcong terrorist. Though B.D. was sent home as part of Richard Nixon’s policy of … Continue reading He’s Black, He’s Beautiful, and by Gosh, He’s Angry: Race in the Early Doonesbury Strips, Part I.
Doonesbury Goes to War, Part III: Phred.
In previous posts, I’ve written about how Garry Trudeau framed the Vietnam war and American militarism more generally in the early years of Doonesbury, culminating in B.D.’s decision to enlist and fight in Vietnam. In those posts, I noted a shift in how GBT wrote about war and the military in the strip’s early years, … Continue reading Doonesbury Goes to War, Part III: Phred.
Look! Rice Paddies!: Doonesbury Goes to War, Part II. Vietnam, 1972
In my last “Long Strange Trip” post, way back in October, I wrote about B.D.’s time in ROTC. Those strips made me reevaluate how I thought about how Garry Trudeau wrote about war. I had remembered GBT’s Vietnam-era strips as being lighthearted and goofy in comparison to the grittier and darker approach that he took … Continue reading Look! Rice Paddies!: Doonesbury Goes to War, Part II. Vietnam, 1972
“Violence is as American as Cherry Pie”: Doonesbury Goes to War, Pt. I
When the curtain falls on Doonesbury, the ensuing retrospectives are bound to focus on Garry Trudeau’s chronicling of the War on Terror and its effects on the men and women who were asked to put their lives and their well-being at risk for a fundamentally flawed set of foreign policies. GBT has used the experiences … Continue reading “Violence is as American as Cherry Pie”: Doonesbury Goes to War, Pt. I
“Even Revolutionaries Love Chocolate Chip Cookies”: Mark Slackmeyer and Radical Campus Politics.
When Garry Trudeau introduced readers to Nichole in September 1971, he seems to have largely shed the frat-boy misogyny that had dominated his writing about women and relationships between women and men in his early strips. [1] The introduction of a character who actively criticized and protested sexism and patriarchy not only marked a key … Continue reading “Even Revolutionaries Love Chocolate Chip Cookies”: Mark Slackmeyer and Radical Campus Politics.
A Screaming Herd of Females: Women and Misogyny in the Early Doonesbury Strips.
Until I got to graduate school, I had learned more about modern feminism from reading Doonesbury than from anywhere else. This may be an exaggeration, but there’s a truth behind it: the social and political dimensions of post-World War Two feminism are a central thematic element in GBT’s work, and he has long made it … Continue reading A Screaming Herd of Females: Women and Misogyny in the Early Doonesbury Strips.
Reading Doonesbury 