Slate interview with Doonebury creator Garry Trudeau

Comments ⁸

1. Pat Crowley

   An excellent interview. Trudeau sets the standard.

   But it seems that he and others who were once in the vanguard (Oliphant- the greatest of all) can’t seem to bring themselves to do their jobs when it comes to dealing with the current
   “moderate” administration.

   Editorial cartooning as we knew it is dying with barely a whimper.

2. Mike Peterson

   You should read his current strips sometime. He does a pretty good job, though he’s no Glenn Beck.

3. Scott Kurtz

   Garry is an amazing cartoonist. He’s a smart writer, an excellent draftsman and more important he’s challenged the readers, papers, editors and establishment.

   And he’s still going strong. 40 years is a huge milestone and Garry puts out excellent work.

4. August J. Pollak

   Doonesbury’s one of the main reasons I started cartooning, and I think it’s amazing there are probably MULTIPLE generations of cartoonists who can say that now.

   It was the first political cartoon I ever read that didn’t need donkeys. elephants and big buttons on lapels saying the name of who the person wearing the button was. And I think that says a lot about why it’s been consistently great for forty years.

   Trudeau cares about the art, the story, the characters, and the writing. Doonesbury is the reason there are a lot of great comic strips- not just editorial cartoons- out there today.

5. B.J. Dewey

   I’ve often wondered why cartoonists like Trudeau and Schulz can go on for 40, 50 years while equally top cartoonists like Watterson are done after ten years (not taking off for his sabbaticals). With Schulz, it seemed a deep need and total identity with his characters and doing a comic strip, while Trudeau credits his curiosity. Whatever, while those three are equally good cartoonists, I think longevity is what makes Schulz and Trudeau great cartoonists. I do think “Calvin & Hobbes” was a great strip, but somehow I don’t feel that Watterson could be considered great without that longevity because longevity is not just continuing to draw a strip for years and years, but to find a way to develop and make it grow. Schulz did this with Snoopy as the Red Baron and adding Snoopy and Woodstock, etc. Trudeau is passionately involved in, and can draw on, current events. Maybe C&H couldn’t have developed beyond the two main characters, but Watterson was so talented that I think he could have done. Or, maybe he did get so burned out that it killed the creativity.

   Also, Trudeau’s comment about syndicates now insisting on “development deals – to find out if a creator has the right temperament” makes me wonder how they go about doing that? Anybody know?

6. frank white

   i think there was still SO MUCH mileage that Bill Watterson could have got out of Calvin and Hobbes that he could still be drawing it now and still remain fresh. He just needed to stay away from the strips( and Sundays especially) where the drawings of the dinosaurs took up half the page. I would have liked to have seen Rosalyn baby sit both Calvin and Susie together (a double booking) , more development on those two crazy aliens that appeared near the end of the strip’s life. The futuristic strips of Calvin living in a robotic future were very funny and could go in several directions. Less imagination based strips where the monster/dinosaur whatever becomes his Mom or teacher in the last panel and do more of the Calvin at school strips and always include Hobbes somehow and show his alienation from the other kids more, not just Moe, to highight the sadness of a kid who only has a stuffed toy for a friend. What about a story where Calvin and Hobes get trapped in the ‘world uner the bed’ where the monsters live? A kind of other world. Or use his cardboard box to make another invention

7. B.J. Dewey

   Frank,

   All of those ideas seem good possibilities and using his other characters more could have brought out more in C&H. I would love to have seen those “crazy aliens” you mention used more. I think they were named Galaxoid and Nebular and they were just about the funniest aliens I’ve ever seen in a strip, especially with the socks over their heads. Unfortunately, with Watterson showing no signs of returning to the strip, or to any other that I’m aware of, we’ll probably never know what might have been.

   (And, yes, we’re getting off the Trudeau subject, although he did himself bring up Watterson.)

8. Frank White

   I agree you B.J. about Galaxoid and Nebular being the funniest aliens ever seen in a strip. I think that could have marked a really different and exciting new direction for Watterson in that he had begun to have new imaginary characters apart from (Calvin and Hobbes) who were recurring ones, perhaps other new recurring characters like this could have been introduced and kept the imagination side of Calvin fresh. It’s still the top of my all time favourite 20 comic strips though.