A Call For The Complete Annotated Doonesbury, 1968-???
The past few years have seen the publication of The Complete Far Side, The Complete Peanuts, and the forthcoming Complete Calvin & Hobbes. However, to me Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury deserves the "complete, annotated" treatment too.
Trudeau's college-newspaper strip Bull Tales started in 1968, and graduated to newspapers (renamed for its main character, Mike Doonesbury) on October 26, 1970. Almost immediately it was controversial, with some papers pulling it -- and some of those later relenting in the face of reader protests. Doonesbury wasn't all about politics, but its characters weren't shy when it came to the issues of the day.
Through the years Doonesbury also poked fun at celebrities (assigning Duke to the "Gregg Allman & Cher Bureau" of People magazine, for example) and trends (encounter groups in the '70s, performance art in the '90s). Sometimes Trudeau modeled characters on real people, as with Zonker's uncle Duke (a stand-in for Hunter Thompson) and Congresswoman Lacey Davenport (inspired by Millicent Fenwick (R-NJ)). Often, though, he just had his own creations participating in historical events both major and minor.
The cast has grown steadily, too. Although the original cast spent was in college until 1983, Trudeau kept adding new characters and expanding the strip's scope. At the end of 1982, Trudeau took an 18-month sabbatical, returning on October 1, 1984 with Mike and his friends graduated from college, and Mike married to Joanie's adult daughter J.J. (The big events were portrayed in 1983's Doonesbury musical.) Today, both Mike and Joanie are the parents of teenagers, although Mike's second wife Kim was first introduced in the '70s as an infant Vietnamese orphan.
Therefore, reading a year's worth of Doonesbury isn't like reading a year's worth of editorial cartoons. Its characters have grown and developed over the course of 35 years into a large, diverse group, interacting as much with each other as with the world around them. It's a lineup even George Perez might balk at drawing in its entirety. Moreover, Doonesbury's cast has proven more lively than those of the traditional soap-opera strips like Rex Morgan, M.D. or Apartment 3-G.
Love it or hate it, Doonesbury has carved out its own place in the history of newspaper comics. It is full of political and cultural commentary, and therefore is a window on history; but it has also become one of comics' longest-running serials. Certainly it stands on its own very well, and has been collected since the early '70s, but it really cries out for the kind of scholarly analysis that its fellow iconic strips have received.
Trudeau's college-newspaper strip Bull Tales started in 1968, and graduated to newspapers (renamed for its main character, Mike Doonesbury) on October 26, 1970. Almost immediately it was controversial, with some papers pulling it -- and some of those later relenting in the face of reader protests. Doonesbury wasn't all about politics, but its characters weren't shy when it came to the issues of the day.
Through the years Doonesbury also poked fun at celebrities (assigning Duke to the "Gregg Allman & Cher Bureau" of People magazine, for example) and trends (encounter groups in the '70s, performance art in the '90s). Sometimes Trudeau modeled characters on real people, as with Zonker's uncle Duke (a stand-in for Hunter Thompson) and Congresswoman Lacey Davenport (inspired by Millicent Fenwick (R-NJ)). Often, though, he just had his own creations participating in historical events both major and minor.
The cast has grown steadily, too. Although the original cast spent was in college until 1983, Trudeau kept adding new characters and expanding the strip's scope. At the end of 1982, Trudeau took an 18-month sabbatical, returning on October 1, 1984 with Mike and his friends graduated from college, and Mike married to Joanie's adult daughter J.J. (The big events were portrayed in 1983's Doonesbury musical.) Today, both Mike and Joanie are the parents of teenagers, although Mike's second wife Kim was first introduced in the '70s as an infant Vietnamese orphan.
Therefore, reading a year's worth of Doonesbury isn't like reading a year's worth of editorial cartoons. Its characters have grown and developed over the course of 35 years into a large, diverse group, interacting as much with each other as with the world around them. It's a lineup even George Perez might balk at drawing in its entirety. Moreover, Doonesbury's cast has proven more lively than those of the traditional soap-opera strips like Rex Morgan, M.D. or Apartment 3-G.
Love it or hate it, Doonesbury has carved out its own place in the history of newspaper comics. It is full of political and cultural commentary, and therefore is a window on history; but it has also become one of comics' longest-running serials. Certainly it stands on its own very well, and has been collected since the early '70s, but it really cries out for the kind of scholarly analysis that its fellow iconic strips have received.
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 2:00 PM
3 Comments:
Doonesbury has been collected in DVD-ROM form. One problem with collecting it now the way Andrews-McMeel has been doing it is that it's ongoing, which kind of thwarts a complete collection. But it's still a likely candidate to be one of the three-four strips that Andrews-McMeel claims to be discussing.
The first printing of the Calvin and Hobbes should generate $25-40 million in sales, btw.
Well, I figure that if it's collected Peanuts-style, a few years at a time, it will be complete eventually.
I have the CD-ROM somewhere, but it's only the first 25 years. I had not heard of DVDs, and so far haven't found them on Doonesbury.com. Besides, print is so much more user-friendly.
I'd actually really like to see something along the lines of Howard Zinn's series of history books (The People's History series) published in tandem with a massive Doonesbury reprint.
Something that gave historical context to all of the storylines and jokes, as well as anecdotal interviews and essays on the subject.
(Similar to what the 25th anniversary collection "What a Long Strange Strip it's Been" did, but in more detail.)
Honestly, I've learned more of late 20th century American history from Doonesbury, than I did in all of high-school and college (though to be fair, I did go to college in Canada).
Actually, this might be a great community based project, similar to Wikipedia.
-bryant.
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