Welcome to the final instalment of my look into how Garry Trudeau has covered Donald Trump since first introducing him to Doonesbury in 1987. In this concluding post, I want to look at how Trump’s dominance of the political moment presents new challenges to satirists, and how those challenges have shaped Trudeau’s work in the … Continue reading “Doesn’t Satire Have to Be Funny?”: Concluding Notes on Doonesbury in the Time of Monsters.
Tag: Mike
“A Firehose of Awfulness”: Doonesbury on Trump, Madness, and Rape
Last time out, I examined how events such as COVID, Donald Trump’s failed coup d’etat, and his subsequent legal woes contributed to Garry Trudeau – reflecting a broader trend among more liberal Americans who’ve lost patience with their MAGA co-citizens – turning his pen against those who had abandoned their civic responsibility to support a … Continue reading “A Firehose of Awfulness”: Doonesbury on Trump, Madness, and Rape
“Darwin. Right Again.” : Doonesbury on MAGA’s “Willing Griftees.”
This is the second part of my look at Doonesbury’s “Trump Quintet,” Garry Trudeau’s five-volume (and counting?) collection of strips about Donald Trump. Last time out, I examined how Trudeau traced the decades-long cultural and political dynamics that set the stage for a corrupt narcissist to seize the White House. I concluded by noting that … Continue reading “Darwin. Right Again.” : Doonesbury on MAGA’s “Willing Griftees.”
“A Cautionary Recap of the Life of a Genuinely Awful Human Being”: Donald Trump in Doonesbury.
In his introduction to a 1968 compilation of cartoons about Lyndon Johnson, Jules Feiffer quoted an 1831 essay describing political cartoonists as those who “insult inferiority of mind and expose defects of body … [and] aggravate what is already hideous,” about their targets. Good political cartoonists, Feiffer continued, had “a blackmailer’s savvy,” allowing them to … Continue reading “A Cautionary Recap of the Life of a Genuinely Awful Human Being”: Donald Trump in Doonesbury.
“But Duane! He Won the Election!”: Political Symbolism and the First Ten Days of the Carter Administration.
Our last look at Doonesbury in the Carter years ended just after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, with Zonker and his friend Nemo the Begonia discussing the new president’s political navieté. Nemo saw Carter’s campaign stump-speech touchstone about wanting to lead a government that was as unselfish and kind as the American people as a sign of … Continue reading “But Duane! He Won the Election!”: Political Symbolism and the First Ten Days of the Carter Administration.
“The Bittersweet Ambiguities of Youth”: Garry Trudeau on Love and Romace on the Comics Page.
I’m still working on the next instalment of my series about Garry Trudeau’s coverage of Jimmy Carter’s presidency: in the meantime, let’s look at a bit of Doonesbury-related ephemera. In February 1973,* New York magazine ran a special issue: “Couples: The Art of Staying Together." Alongside “Videotaping Your Marriage to Make It Better” and Gail Sheehy’s … Continue reading “The Bittersweet Ambiguities of Youth”: Garry Trudeau on Love and Romace on the Comics Page.
This Week in Doonesbury: “Still a Few Bugs in the System,” or GBT Does NFTs
I have a Google alert that notifies me when there’s news about Doonesbury or Garry Trudeau. Last week, the app sent me an ad for an auction of a series of Doonesbury-branded NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. NFTs, simply put, are a kind of exclusive electronic “print” of a piece of artwork, and they are a … Continue reading This Week in Doonesbury: “Still a Few Bugs in the System,” or GBT Does NFTs
“Have a Nice Day, John Mitchell”: Kent State and the Cartoon Activism of Garry Trudeau
Last week marked the 52nd anniversary of the Kent State massacre. Garry Trudeau’s strips about the tragedy (which happened about six months before Doonesbury debuted) marked an important step in his early development as a cartoonist. For the first time, Trudeau engaged in a style of activist cartooning that was explicitly political, intentionally devoid of … Continue reading “Have a Nice Day, John Mitchell”: Kent State and the Cartoon Activism of Garry Trudeau
“Well, Great. A Massive Coronary”: Death and Dying in Doonesbury
There have been, by my reckoning, five significant Doonesbury characters who have died (not counting Duke, who has “died” twice, once when he was mistakenly declared dead after being taken hostage in Iran in 1979, and once when he spent some time as a zombie in the employ of Haitian strongman Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier). … Continue reading “Well, Great. A Massive Coronary”: Death and Dying in Doonesbury
“It Sure Is Against the Law.” Marijuana, Part One: Zonker’s Bust and Box Brown’s Cannabis.
On 23 June 2019, Garry Trudeau returned to a topic that has woven its way through Doonesbury since the earliest days of the strip: marijuana. Zonker asks Zipper to sweep out the drying shed at their (now quasi-legal) marijuana grow-op, Z&Z Bud. Zipper resents having to do menial work when he could be focusing on … Continue reading “It Sure Is Against the Law.” Marijuana, Part One: Zonker’s Bust and Box Brown’s Cannabis.
Reading Doonesbury 