Blowback

Blowback

A clean, well-lit place to vent

Please feel free to contribute to this frequently-updated forum, which posts selected commentary on our favorite comic strip. If you'd like your critique to be posted, please note that civility, if not approbation, counts. Click here to submit a comment.

  • B.D.

    Karen | Layton, UT | August 18, 2021

    "We could have won, you know, if we'd really wanted to." Makes me wonder if B.D. will say that to an Afghani one day. 

  • SIX WEEKS

    Michael Wardell | Saugerties, NY | August 16, 2021

    I am retiring in six weeks and really loved Sunday's strip. Based on Bernie's response to Mike, I am definitely ready to retire.

  • REMEMBER

    Jerome Crawford | Fort Collins, CO | August 15, 2021

    Asimov thought of it first. Remember the Encyclopedists.

  • US

    | | August 15, 2021

    It's true that Mike was not like that back in Walden: none of us was like that "back in Walden." We have become Comfortably Numb.

  • TIME TO RETIRE

    Don Albertson | Spring Mills, PA | August 15, 2021

    I knew it was time to retire after working at home for a year and dreading the rigor of working in the office. I think I'm a bit older than Mike but I'm not sure because I was in college when the strip first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

  • TITLE CHARACTER

    Brian Harvey | Berkeley, CA | August 15, 2021

    Re Today's strip: Great punch line. Having had a mostly-academic career, "monetize" isn't in my speaking vocabulary, but after my official retirement I'm still mostly doing what I've always done, so I guess I'm not ready to retire either. It's too bad that the strip's title character ended up being the one preoccupied with money; he wasn't like that back in Walden. But I sympathize with him about everything hurting!

  • FRONT LINES

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | July 26, 2021

    Weaponizing the truth, Mel's not one jot partisan; she's on the front lines to defend us against domestic enemies. Huzzah!

  • MEL

    Brian Harvey | Berkeley, CA | July 25, 2021

    Aw, c'mon! Mel's smarter than that.

  • EMBARRASSING DOCUMENTS

    Whit Whitaker | Fleetwood, NC | July 25, 2021

    In the 50-years-ago-today Flashback strip Trudeau sticks it to F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover with that reference to their "top secret F.B.I. file room." Just months earlier, on March 8, 1971, the F.B.I. office in a Philly suburb was burgled by the unknown Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., which made off with a treasure trove of embarrassing documents detailing the F.B.I.’s illegal activities. Journalist Betty Medsger broke the story days later in The Washington Post and her 2014 book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. tells the story, as does the 2014 documentary 1971.

  • 2016

    Susan Bein | Portland, OR | July 24, 2021

    Just noticed the first panel in the strip from 5 years ago today, about 2016 post-election shock. Shadowy figures in the background seem to be saluting with a single arm outstretched as if to be saying, "Heil Hitler" and the red, white and blue balloons all seem to be somewhat deflated, or am I reading too much into it?...

  • DOWNSIZING TRAUMA

    Mike Lewis | Washington, DC | July 19, 2021

    How could you move to another subject without resolving the Kim-Mike downsizing trauma?

  • ROLAND

    Linda Weinberg | Anmore, CANADA | July 18, 2021

    Oh Roland, welcome back. You have been missed. 

  • REAL CALLING

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | July 13, 2021

    Re today's Flashback strip from '01, when Boopsie is applying to appear on "Survivor": perhaps the czar of "The Apprentice" missed his real calling. 

  • THE BRIGHT SIDE

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | July 11, 2021

    On the bright side, at least that thing must have had a low carbon footprint!

  • MAMA

    Don Albertson | Spring Mills, PA | July 06, 2021

    Prescience rears its head once more. Make America Mighty Again!

  • EATING CROW

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | July 04, 2021

    Let's hope the select committee on the 1/6 siege can start to turn the tide against the real steal (of our democracy). Otherwise -- as today's strip vividly augurs -- we may look forward to generations of Americans eating crow. On Independence Day, one weeps for the land we may lose.

  • ALWAYS GLAD TO SEE THEM

    Roger Webb | Little Rock, AR | July 01, 2021

    On today's Doonesbury Flashbacks page, we are treated to four strips featuring Davenports, beginning with the poignant moment of Dick's death when the birds came. Over the years, the Davenports have been perhaps my favorite characters. They were the last good Republicans -- G. H. W. Bush and Barbara may have been the real world equivalents. Always glad to see them.

  • Q

    Art | Chitina, AK | June 29, 2021

    Just as I suspected, Garry (under the guise of Phred) is Q, and has been posting cryptic, subliminal messages since at least 1996!

     

  • RE-ENACTMENT

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | June 27, 2021

    While researching a book, the late Pulitzer laureate Tony Horwitz (a DC native) did some re-enactment himself. Unfortunately, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998) has proven more prescient than he might have thought. So now the Lost Causers' casus belli is that Trump won because he says so. Trouble is, if they fight on flaccidly opposed, they may yet prevail. Pity. 

  • MEL

    John McQueen | Westminster, MD | June 13, 2021

    Harassed by an open carrier in a recent Flashback, Leo finds his voice to point out how wounded vets fought for freedoms that include such bravado. Let's hope Mel finds hers, to get through to some hard brass skulls that washing one's hands of internecine assault does our nation no favors. In the wake of 1/6, with Chief Deputy Whip Dan Kildee (among others, no doubt) reeling from "Post-Trump Stress Disorder," one holds one's breath for Mel. Again. All the more, come to think of it, since our ex-Commander-in-Chief admits (on tape) to habitual sexual assault -- and has been credibly charged with rape