'Doonesbury' Creator Looks at Past and Future

By: Dave Astor "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau talked about the past, present, and future during an April 23 speech at the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention here.

He touched on the present with remarks about B.D. losing his leg in Iraq (see "Why Doonesbury's B.D. Didn't Die). He looked at the future with comments about motion-capture software, which Trudeau used to animate his Duke character during the 2000 presidential campaign. This technology, said the Universal Press Syndicate creator, "makes it possible to animate for low cost and in real time."

Trudeau, 55, noted that if cartoonists want to reach more people in this fragmented media market, their work can't appear in print alone. He said some readers have seen "Doonesbury" only on the Web, and that many younger people -- including his three children -- "never read newspapers." It also helps if a comic, when it goes online, uses some of the Web's multimedia capabilities.

The "Doonesbury" cartoonist also praised the Web as a research tool. "What did Bush really say? You can find a transcript right away," he said by way of example.

But Trudeau devoted the bulk of his talk to a retrospective of his long career. "I'm one of the squatters people trying to break into the industry despise," he said wryly, referring to the many veteran cartoonists -- and the many creators who have taken over comics from deceased cartoonists -- in newspapers.

Trudeau has been at it so long he recalled starting to "dog" George W. Bush in 1968, when both the cartoonist and the future president were at Yale University.

Doing "Doonesbury" as a career came about almost accidentally, Trudeau said. One reason why the then-fledgling Universal signed the inexperienced cartoonist in 1970 was because his comic reflected that tumultous period of Vietnam, political upheaval, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. "I was the original not-ready-for-prime-time player," he recalled. "I made the comics page safe for bad art. Without me, there would be no 'Cathy' and no 'Dilbert.' I grew up as an artist and social critic in plain public sight."

Many staid newspaper publishers didn't like "Doonesbury" back then. A number of them cancelled the comic, and Trudeau was worried. But Universal co-founder John McMeel assured the cartoonist that "sooner or later, these guys die." And "damn if he wasn't right," Trudeau remembered. "All across the country, publishers who said 'Doonesbury' would appear in their newspapers over their dead bodies were getting their wish. My client list floated upward on the tears of widows and children."

It also didn't hurt that Trudeau won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975.

Today, Trudeau continues to juggle about 30 major characters. "It's like a Russian novel," he said. And the "Doonesbury" creator has also found time to respond to letters. Khalil Bendib, a self-syndicated editorial cartoonist, thanked Trudeau for replying to a letter he wrote when in college. Bendib also thanked Trudeau for "never falling into the temptation of stereotyping Muslims and Arabs."