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: Trump
“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.
This Week in Doonesbury: “Imagine if They’d Been Black.”
One thing made abundantly clear during the Trump era was the extent to which protest movements driven by the demands of White Americans could expect to encounter a very different level of state response than movements focused on the demands of African Americans or other racialized groups. One only need compare the response to Black … Continue reading This Week in Doonesbury: “Imagine if They’d Been Black.”
“Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul”: Comparing Watergate and the Trump Impeachment in Doonesbury
The most popular post I have written for this project – by far – addresses how Garry Trudeau updated his famous Watergate-era “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” strip to comment on the parallels between Richard Nixon’s corruption and that of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Every revelation of Donald Trump’s wrongdoing, from Robert Mueller’s inability … Continue reading “Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul”: Comparing Watergate and the Trump Impeachment in Doonesbury
This Week in Doonesbury: In Search of Trump’s Brain
The most popular post that I have written is my look at how Garry Trudeau resurrected what is possibly his most famous comic strip, Mark Slackmeyer’s 1974 proclamation that Attorney General John Mitchell was “GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!” of crimes associated with the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. GBT revived the gag in 1987 in reference … Continue reading This Week in Doonesbury: In Search of Trump’s Brain
This Week in Doonesbury: “What’s Gender-Fluid?”
(Note: This was actually last week in Doonesbury, but a nasty bike crash has slowed me down a bit.) This year, I reviewed two comics that told women’s stories as they experienced gender transition: Julia Kaye’s Super Late Bloomer, and Sabrina Symington’s First Year Out. Both books provide intimate and nuanced accounts of the triumphs … Continue reading This Week in Doonesbury: “What’s Gender-Fluid?”
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
This Week In Doonesbury: GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!!!
On Sunday, Garry Trudeau published a strip that I’ve seen coming since Donald Trump won the election. But even though I knew this gag was on its way, actually seeing it in print cracked me up. First it’s a great joke. Second, because, by recycling a strip from 44 years ago, Trudeau demonstrated his ability to … Continue reading This Week In Doonesbury: GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!!!
Reading Doonesbury 