I'm surprised no one has created a board for this yet. The only daily strip to seriously rival Peanuts as the greatest comic strip ever. I love how Trudeau will come back to re-introduce characters who haven't been seen in decades.
Actually I hadn't read it in a few years, but ever since 9/11 I've been loving it again!
But Get Fuzzy is still my current favorite.
The problem that Doonesbury has if it wants to continue long into the future is that Trudeau doesn't really have a bead on the younger generation (i.e. Alex Doonesbury and Redfern's son). While he comes close, occasionally, to getting them right, he needs to invest a little more time in making them believeable characters if they're going to aid the strip later on.
Mr. Butts, the cartoonish talking cigarette who is a spokesman for the tobacco industry, is supposed to be a figment of Mike's imagination. He evolved over Mike's guilt about doing tobacco ads when he worked for the ad agency. But other characters frequently interact with Mr. Butts, even though he's supposed to be imaginary.
I like it when it's incisive. Sometimes, Trudeau thinks just saying "The President is ••••••" is incisive. It's not.
Sometimes I'd just wish Trudeau would, y'know, be funny. My favorite Doonesbury quote from recent memory is:
"I want to fight the Germans, man! It's my dream!"
In one of the earliest Doonesbury strips, Mike set Mark up on a blind date with his sister, who bore a perfect feminine relationship to him (Mike). Although Mike's little brother Benjamin "Sal" has been a recurrent character throughout the strip, we never see or hear about his sister other than this one strip.
For an example of when the series is not funny, read the compiliation "Revolt of the English Majors." There are some very, VERY funny segments (Duke's campaign, J.J. and Zeke's wedding), but there are a few segments that are just blatant editorializing, mainly in segments about Bush and Texas (at least the Bush stuff is funny, the Texas stuff isn't).
MikeC,
What state do you live in?
Michigan.
Trudeau has become basically a political cartoonist now; he's funny, granted, but his agenda has taken over the strip. When will John Kerry make an appearance? I dunno. When will waffle Clinton reappear, especially with his new book? Will something other than Iraq be examined?
John Kerry already put in a couple of appearances over a quarter century ago. Not exactly flattering stuff as I recall. Not that I was around at the time. Hang on, let me try and dig something up.
Okay, here:
http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2004/02/04/john_kerry_doonesbury_strips_from_1971.html
How's that for biting? I wonder if Trudeau would disown them today. It'd be a pity. It's very superficial, but everytime I see Kerry, I think of that riff from "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders": "Is that Satan's butt? Oh no, wait, it's that guy's face." I guess it's just me, but you seen one Bonesman, you seen 'em all.
Anyway...
Doonesbury and the Death of Hunter S. Thompson. (It'll be a week-long thing, kids.)
My favorite storyline from this strip featured a woman who applied for a job at the White House. When the FBI guy came to do the background check, she did the fist pump of joy, before treating him like a cross between a rock star and a new best friend!