40: A Doonesbury Retrospective 1990 to 1999

By G. B. Trudeau

The third volume of this retrospective anthology covers the Pulitzer prize-winning cartoon strip from 1990 to 1999.

On October 26, 1970, G.B. Trudeau introduced the world to a college jock named B.D. and his inept and geeky roommate, Mike Doonesbury. Fourteen thousand strips later, Doonesbury has become one of the most beloved and acclaimed comic strips in history. Over the years, the world of Doonesbury grew uniquely vast, sustained by an intricately woven web of relationships—over forty major characters spanning three generations. 

The complete 40: A Doonesbury Anthology presents more than 1,800 comic strips that chart key adventures and cast connections over the last four decades. Dropped in throughout this rolling narrative are twenty detailed essays in which Trudeau contemplates his characters, including portraits of core characters such as Duke and Honey, Zonker, Joanie, and Rev. Sloan, as well as more recent additions, such as Zipper, Alex, and Toggle. Trudeau also includes an annotated diagram that maps the mind-boggling matrix of character relationships.

This third volume of the four-volume e-book edition of 40 covers the years 1990 to 1999 for the celebrated cartoon strip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449422837

Book preview

A few words about what this collection is not.

It’s not about Watergate, gas lines, cardigans, Reaganomics, a thousand points of light, Monica, New Orleans, or even Dubya. None of that.

Admit it, you’re relieved.

You’ve either forgotten much of the historical detritus referenced in Doonesbury through the years, or, even more understandable, you’d like to. Or—and there’s no shame in this, either—you weren’t alive when much of it went down. In any event, it’s tough decoding long-expired topical material, and there’s little pleasure in humor that requires explanation.

So this anthology isn’t about the defining events of the last four decades. It is instead about how it felt to live through those years—a loosely organized chronicle of modern times, as crowdsourced by what was once called "the Doonesbury gang."

That gang is now a mob, but it all began with a single character—B.D., a knuckleheaded college quarterback who presided over a huddle of talented but infantile subordinates. The strip, then called Bull Tales, was strictly a campus one-off, a coattail creation. It was inspired by a local phenom named Brian Dowling, who in real life was as smart and modest as his comic strip counterpart was obtuse and arrogant. (Hence the humor, I hoped.) There was no reason Dowling should have enjoyed his shabby portrayal in the strip, but it seems he did, adding to his aura of imperturbability.

Then came syndication. The narrow focus had worked fine for a local sports strip, but to court the attention of a national audience, a more diverse cast had to be assembled. And so I added eponymous everyman Mike Doonesbury and snarky activist Mark Slackmeyer—sturdy, recognizable archetypes to join B.D. as the strip’s tent-pole characters. It was my first and last concession to editorial balance, and I quickly subverted it. As Doonesbury opened wide and gained momentum, a supporting cast converged from all directions: Zonker, avatar of high hippie slackness; Joanie, accidental feminist; Ginny, post–civil rights era black striver; and Rev. Scot Sloan, social justice warrior.

B.D.

Mike Doonesbury

Mark Slackmeyer

Phil Slackmeyer

Zonker Harris

Barbara Ann Boopstein

Nguyen Van Phred

Bernie

Rufus Jackson

Rev. Scot Sloan

Joanie Caucus

Jim Andrews

President King

Roland Burton Hedley, Jr.

In 1970, there were so many banners afield, so many movements afire. And since the action was predominantly playing out on college campuses, I decided to stick with the undergraduate scene I knew. For the next twelve years, the core characters in Doonesbury stayed put, happily hunkered down at Walden, the cozy commune that housed them as they faithfully failed to age out of college. Finally, in 1984, I took a sabbatical and hit the reset button. The strip’s static universe lurched into real time, dislodging the cast from their bucolic surroundings and sending them to join secondary characters such as Duke, Lacey, J.J., and Zeke, who had been growing up in a parallel universe more responsive to the passage of time.

Thus realigned, the tribe fanned out across the country, alighting in new venues such as the East Village and Georgetown and Malibu, where their lives were of necessity repopulated with mates, friends, associates, and (whoa!) children. A profusion of new supporting characters popped up everywhere.

Most humor strips do just fine with a half-dozen or so players. Calvin and Hobbes had only two essential characters, and one of them was imaginary. By the late ’80s, Doonesbury had almost forty. The clutter became challenging for longtime readers, intimidating for latecomers—like opening a Russian novel in the middle. But the matrix of relationships at the heart of Doonesbury yielded endless narrative possibilities. I didn’t have to find a new twist on old themes as most legacy strips do—or rethread the needle every day like a gag cartoonist. I simply followed the characters into their quotidian lives, played out against a scrim of cultural and political context, and occasionally bumped them into that thicket of coincidence that only fictional characters must endure. Honey reencounters her old roommate J.J. on Donald Trump’s yacht! Mike marries Kim, introduced twenty years earlier as a Vietnamese orphan! Alex and Toggle find each other on Facebook! Think of the odds! All storytellers stand on the shoulders