Recent FAQS

FAQs

Beta-fresh answers, uploaded occasionally

Lets face it, our favorite comic strip is often obscure or inconsistent, and key characters are sometimes left stranded for years. Long-suffering readers are within their rights to demand some clarification. Use the "Ask GBT" form to email us your questions, and we will answer those we can on the Blowback page, and also archive the answers here.

Q: My newspaper, The Boston Globe, doesn't run the first two panels of your Sunday strip. Do they have the right to edit your work like that?
-- B.W., Lowell, MA | Creating the Strip | February 12, 2007
A:Newspaper editors can choose among several formats for their Sunday color comic sections. Although the Sunday Doonesbury in its entirety typically consists of eight panels (plus a title panel), some formats can only accommodate six. For this reason, the first two "throwaway panels" are usually related to, but not necessary to, what follows. The good news is that you can always read the complete Sunday Doonesbury strip here at the Town Hall.
Q: I thought that all "real world" personalities used in Doonesbury were given icons, such as an asterisk, a giant hand, a waffle, a helmet and the like. Is your use of an "actual likeness" of Donald Trump a first?
-- Mark, Toronto, CANADA | Characters | January 28, 2007
A:Though a robust tradition of iconic representation has developed in the strip, it is by no means consistent or obligatory, and numerous public figures have been represented by more traditional means. Trump himself has made several previous appearances, including this February 1990 week of in-his-face strips.
Q: A longtime fan, I bought all of the "smaller" books up to You Give Great Meeting, Sid, and all of the anthologies up through Doonesbury Deluxe. But as our kids got older and more expensive I was forced to realign my spending priorities.
In 2005, Hurricane Rita (not Katrina, the other one) blew our house down and ruined all of our possessions. In "starting over", one of the top things on my list has been replacing, if not the smaller Doonesbury books, at least the anthologies -- and acquiring the ones that I never owned. Could you give me a list of all of them? I'd like to get them in hardcover, but have only been able to do so up to (once again) Doonesbury Deluxe. Were any of the later ones released in that format?
-- Bob Martindale, Nederland, Texas | Storyline | January 22, 2007
A:In the original Doonesbury publishing cycle, small-format books were published every six months and periodically anthologized into larger volumes (with a few strips edited out in the process). This gradually evolved into the current program, in which a large-format book appears more or less annually. The following large-format titles will put the vast majority of the Doonesbury canon on your shelf: The Doonesbury Chronicles, Doonesbury?s Greatest Hits, The People?s Doonesbury, Doonesbury Dossier, Doonesbury Deluxe, Recycled Doonesbury, The Portable Doonesbury, The Bundled Doonesbury, Buck Wild Doonesbury, Duke 2000, The Revolt of the English Majors, Peace Out, Dawg!, Got War?, Talk to the Hand!, and the recently-published Heckuva Job, Bushie! There are two large-format special-themed volumes: Action Figure!: The Life and Times of Doonesbury?s Uncle Duke, and Dude: The Big Book of Zonker. The only Doonesbury book published in hardcover after Doonesbury Deluxe was the twenty-five-year retrospective Flashbacks
Q: Your daily archival Flashbacks feature, which shows the strip 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 years ago, has a serious Leap Year flaw. Only occasionally would a strip that originally appeared on a February 29th have the chance to be displayed. How about dusting the nine neglected bissextile Doonesburys off and showing them the light of day?
-- M.B., New Haven, CT | Creating the Strip | January 09, 2007
A:The fact that G.B. Trudeau was on sabbatical in 1984 whittles the Leap Year nine down to eight, but we are pleased to share those strips with you here. Thank you for suggesting this small adjustment, which we hope will put the Doonesbury Calendar back in synch with the cosmic flow of time.
Q: Mark and Chase are getting divorced? Whoa, I didn?t even know they were a couple. How did I miss that? Clearly there were some too subtle indicators that I glossed over.
-- Bob M., Seattle, WA | Characters | November 15, 2006
A:Some indicators are more subtle than others. Case in point, this relatively unsubtle series on Mark and Chase?s nuptials.
Q: The recent Garry Trudeau profile by Gene Weingarten in The Washington Post Magazine was generally pretty good, but the author slipped up on a detail. After noting that B.D. had hit on Celeste at the Vet Center, he claims that cheating on Boopsie "hasn't happened to our knowledge in 20-plus years of an eccentric but strong marriage." But what about Gulf War I, when B.D. hooked up with an officer on an R&R ship?
-- Ron Telford, Philadelphia, PA | Characters | November 15, 2006
A:Not to be Clintonesque, but said affair took place before B.D. and Boopsie's actual nuptials. On the other hand, it did occur -- and during the 20-plus years they've been together. Thank you for your attention to detail.
Q: Didn't Kim go to MIT, just like Alex?
-- Pam D., Seattle, WA | Characters | October 26, 2006
A:Yes. After Mike moved to Seattle and went to work at Bernie's Byte Shack, he began courting co-worker and future wife Kim Rosenthal. Kim's MIT experience came up in this early conversation, and then again, and then again later, as her step-daughter prepared for college.
Q: What's up with Ray suddenly being married again? After the first Gulf war, his wife left him, and when he returned to Iraq, he was talking about having been through two divorces in the intervening time and being glad to be back in uniform. There's been no mention of him going back to the States to get a new wife -- so when did he get married again?
-- Susanna Thomas, Philadelphia, PA | Characters | October 06, 2006
A:Vast portions of the Doonesbury universe remain mysterious, even to its creator. In regards to Ray's matrimonial vitae, here's one possible scenario: Post Gulf War I, after he and Tina divorced, Ray and May dated for a while but split up. Ray married someone else, but after that union dissolved, Ray and May got back together and subsequently married -- either before he deployed to Iraq, or while he was home on leave. We hasten to add that we in the FAQ conning tower just made that up, and other scenarios are equally plausible. The point is, Ray and May being married is not technically an inconsistency -- a huge category in Doonesbury. In any case, we appreciate the opportunity to focus on Mr. Hightower's past, and are pleased to share with you this 1991 series about his rough re-entry after GWI, and a series from 1993, at which point Ray and May were dating, and Ray and Des had begun sparring.
Q: Re: this week's "King George" strips. GBT did this once before, in the Nixon era. I remember the punchline "Tricia, however, looks forward to becoming a princess," or something like that. Could you please give a link to those archived strips?
-- Mary, Port Moody, B.C., CANADA | Storyline | September 15, 2006
A:A timely question, which we are happy to answer in the affirmative. The series you refer to concerned purloined IT&T memos which revealed a plot to crown Richard Nixon. The scandal was uncovered by young Rufus Jackson, Mike Doonesbury's precocious tutee, and made public by Zonker Harris. Herewith a link to the 1972 episode known as THE ZONKER PAPERS.
Q: The strip often refers to B.D.'s tour of duty in Vietnam, a war which ended before I was born. What actually happened to him over there?
-- Gary B., Soquel, CA | Characters | September 02, 2006
A:Although B.D. received purple hearts in both Vietnam and Iraq, his experience in regard to the former was significantly less traumatic than in regard to the latter, as this B.D. in Vietnam sampler shows. Younger readers may be surprised to learn that among the many hats Zonker has worn was one labeled "Press". Until recently, the former reporter himself was unfamiliar with this portion of his resume.