Oh No What Will You Do Without 'Doonesbury'? (If You Are 89 Years Old)
Now that his Amazon sitcom Alpha House has been renewed for another "season," Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau will put the comic strip on hold. Fine, just as long as there's not another Doonesbury musical. This development in no way means the newspaper comic strip is a dying medium or anything (it totally is).
Trudeau will continue doing new Sunday strips each week, but starting February 24, new installments of the daily strip will go on "long-term and open-ended hiatus." Distributor Universal Uclick will offer Doonesbury "flashback" strips to replace the dailies, drawing on an archive that goes back to 1970. The syndicator proudly says that there are over 13,000 strips that haven't been published in newspapers since their original run; in reality, of course, gags about Gerald Ford's press secretary Ron Nessen are probably well past their shelf life.
It's been years since I've read the strip but I did enjoy how Duke used to "like to soften up a room a bit" with automatic weapons before he would enter the room.
Oh gosh! I just loved Doonesbury - thirty years ago.