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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 13, 2021 22:30:29 GMT -5
Over at the NPR website, they have a tribute to 50 years of Doonesbury. Add another notch to the "things that make me feel old" tree. I've been a casual reader of the strip, as I didn't get a lot of it when it started out (Peanuts was more up my alley); but, it grew on me, by the time I was in college. There have been so many moments in history captured there, so much commentary on the culture, the people, the ridiculous, the serious, and beyond. For me, personally, one of the seminal moments was when BD was wounded in the Iraq War and was medivaced. Trudeau developed an affinity with servicemembers in the post-Vietnam era and those moments (showcased in the article), really do bring home the human cost of war. Happy Anniversary to Gary, BD, Mike, Zonker and all the rest of the gang!
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Post by berkley on Jan 14, 2021 17:27:15 GMT -5
For some reason I thought it had started a little earlier than 1970 - I think because by the time I first saw it in the mid or late 70s the strip already seemed to have a long history, and would refer back to things that I associated with the height of the hippy era. But 1970 was still part of that, I suppose.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 14, 2021 22:28:31 GMT -5
For some reason I thought it had started a little earlier than 1970 - I think because by the time I first saw it in the mid or late 70s the strip already seemed to have a long history, and would refer back to things that I associated with the height of the hippy era. But 1970 was still part of that, I suppose. Well, it was a continuation of Bull Tales, his strip at Yale and some early strips were reprints of Bull Tales. But, yeah, the Hippie thing was still going, in some form, until about 1972(ish), depending on what you call the "Hippie thing." You still find elements of that culture into the mid-70s, but it seemed like it wound down with Vietnam and then Watergate. Then, everybody hit the disco and partied like it's 1979. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 15, 2021 1:19:08 GMT -5
It's a strip I liked and even admired at times without ever feeling closely connected to it, not sure why. Possibly I was just at the wrong, sort of in-between age to appreciate it fully - too young to have been there at the beginning, too old to discover it later and see it as a fascinating relic of a past era. Or maybe it was just that it never appeared in our local paper until quite a few years into the 70s, if I remember, and I always had the feeling that I had missed a lot of character and past history stuff. But it's something I can see myself trying the first few years from the beginning, one of these days.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,450
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Post by shaxper on Jan 15, 2021 12:33:14 GMT -5
When I first got seriously into comic strips in the early 1990s, I couldn't get enough of Bloom County/Outland, Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, and a few others. I truly wanted to love Doonesbury too (especially as it influenced so much of Bloom County), but I felt like it had already passed its prime and was telling less enticing grown-up stories of characters who must have been far more interesting a decade earlier. At the very least, it was speaking to the generation that came before me. I couldn't appreciate nor understand so much of its focus.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2021 14:43:10 GMT -5
When I was in jr. high and high school ('82-'87), our local paper (the Hartford Courant) didn't put Doonsbury on the comics page but on the editorial page with the political cartoons (they also put Tank McNamara on in the ports section rather than with the comics, so it wasn't an isolated case), so I usually forgot to look for it when I read the funnies. They didn't even carry the Sunday installment because they didn't include it in the color Sunday Funnies section (and the other local regional paper, the Journal Inquirer) didn't do Sunday editions), so I found it to be a very difficult strip to follow. So while I got big into Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes at the time, and started picking up Comics Revue for classic strips when I could afford it, I neve formed any attachment to Doonsbury. It's always been a work I respected, but never got to particularly liking.
-M
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 15, 2021 23:50:50 GMT -5
It was quite common for Doonesbury to be put on the editorial page, especially from the 80s onward, as there was a lot of comment on the Reagan Administration in those years (not that there hadn't been a lot on Nixon, Ford and Carter); but, it seemed like that is when a backlash about the political content began. The Chicago Tribune also had Tank McNamara in the sports section. Funny enough that I would see Doonesbury in editorial sections, in the 90s, but Mallard Fillmore, which is completely a political strip, was usually still on the comics page.
Doonesbury, for me, was always kind of going through cycles; at certain points it was very heavy on current events and at others it seemed to focus more on the lives of the cast. i think that often created a disconnect with readers or potential readers, as you were never quite sure what you were going to get. I read it more after college, when it was focusing more on Mike as a dad of a very smart and challenging daughter (probably reflecting Trudeau's own fatherhood experiences), and things like BD and Zonker. The Gulf War was a period when I really connected with the strip, as a lot of his material was reflecting things I was feeling, at the time, with the information I was getting through message traffic, compared to what I was seeing on CNN. That was a very formative period for my adult outlook and I think Doonesbury was very in tune with my experiences, while Bloom County had been nudging my thoughts of high school and college.
Bloom County, for me, was always striving more for the gag, than the comment, whereas Doonesbury often felt like the comment was more important than the gag. Also, I think Breathed's drawing style, with the use of anthropomorphic animals and humans, gave it greater fantasy leeway.
Calvin & Hobbes just reawakened the sheer joy of the comics, for me. Watterson set such high standards for himself, yet never loss sight of the fact he got to do something he loved and it permeates the work. Also, like his heroes, Charles Schulz, George Harriman and Walt Kelly, he was a deep thinker.
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