Big part of maturity has been realizing that the only Doonesbury character worth emulating is Zonker, which is why I’ve spent the last half-decade getting stoned, going outside shirtless, and communing with plants

You know even if you were not actually following politics at the time Doonesbury was basically self-contained, giving you enough to go on by itself, but Bloom County is absolutely incomprehensible.

You know even if you were not actually following politics at the time Doonesbury was basically self-contained, giving you enough to go on by itself, but Bloom County is absolutely incomprehensible

Thinking about how when Doonesbury, which had been born as a college newspaper cartoon against the Vietnam War, treated Iraq I/Desert Storm it was kind of presented as a Boomer reconnection with a yay-U.S. Military ethic, B.D.-as-troop treated more seriously than when he got lost and had to be rescued by Vietcong Phred*, and then for Iraq II/the sandbox wars it just did an Adventures in Military Trauma Care plotline three! times!

* who was maybe related to the boat people refugee orphan who later got reused as the self-insert character’s Younger Asian Girlfriend In The 90s After Your First Wife part of the Boomer Epic

just thinkin’ bout Doonesbury, the iconic boomer parapolitical newspaper cartoon

which started as an injokey and football-centric Yale student paper strip

then broke out and eventually tracked the generation

for a while it addressed the compromises, the ‘80s were the stand-in character as a yuppie ad man torn about selling cigarettes in a divorce-bound marriage, in stuff that in style and ambition tracked with contemporaries Zippy the Pinhead or Life in Hell

also the peace-loving pastor dealing with the New Age flight from the church and then the “seeker-sensitive” return when they had kids

I think the turning point might have been Gulf War I, Niedermeyer-type quarterback B.D. was called up from the reserves and there was this Sunday strip where the throwaway panels, or maybe more, were ditzy fuckbunny Boopsie in a bikini untied in front, like an old “for the troops” pin-up

which was kind of tongue-in-cheek about the low stakes of the war but also kind of a reunion/apology for his generation after how Vietnam went?

in his Vietnam strips B.D. was an arrogant clueless butter bar who got lost and captured by good-natured V.C. Phred

who maybe, because artist Trudeau was so economical with recycling his characters, was related to the Jewish Vietnamese orphan who then got reused as stand-in Mike’s younger co-worker turned second, wiser-choice Asian gamer geek gf/wife in the ‘90s-2000s

then in the 2000s the plots started to center around his daughter from his first marriage who looked like the Cory Kennedy version of him just saying

oh, but not before figuring out what to do with Gulf War II and doing an “adventures in military trauma care” plot FOUR TIMES, with B.D. losing a leg and his black sharp-jawed buddy getting PTSD and some new NCO girl getting sexually abused and his daughter’s boyfriend recovering from IED brain trauma it was ridiculous

BOOMERS, MAN

oh this is all before bringing up the Hunter S. Thompson stand-in

I know that by even caring about this I’m literally 20 years behind the curve, but when did Doonesbury become Adventures in Military Therapy? This is like the third fourth! take on the exact same concept.