Customer Reviews

Flashbacks: Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury

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Here we find the first CharlieBrownish debut of Mike, and also the first appearances of B.D. the Jock, zonked Zonker and Marvelous Mark, and also Bloopsie, Joanie Caucus, and the immortal Duke, whose Chinese saga makes one of the best pages of the book. Here you can follow the graphic evolution of the strip,and the psychological evolution of the charachters in the course of American and world history. A must for the Doonesbury fans!

Has it really been 25 years that Doonesbury is making his contributons to our survival in a world gone mad? This book makes it possible to look back, not in anger but irony. The problems from back then are gone, replaced by even worse ones, the cast has grown older but Mike and his friends are still with us. Great!

It seems like the comment that I have heard most frequently from others about Doonesbury is that they feel they can't get into it, because the story lines are long and drawn-out, and they assume a depth of knowledge about the characters on the part of the reader that could only have come from reading the cartoon over a long period of time. This book is a great opportunity for those who have not followed Doonesbury since it began (or, who perhaps were not alive when it began, as I was not) to follow the development of the strip from its earliest days through very recent times. It's also a great book for long-time Doonesbury fans, because it provides a lot of additional materials, comment from Trudeau, comment from a number of cartoon subjects over the years (check out what Donald Trump said about it), etc. This book is also great for people who like Doonesbury and would like a book to call their own, but don't want to spring for a whole set of collected strips in book form that have been released over the years, because it provides a fairly comprehensive collection of the strip in one volume.

Doonesbury has been a chronicle of our times since the 60s, and in my view, along with "Calvin & Hobbes," has been the most consistently original and consistently humorous strip appearing on the comics page in recent times. Let's hope it is around for another 25!

A wonderful collection of Trudeau's best of the first 25 years of Doonesbury. Includes critiques and comments by everyone from Gerald Ford to Trudeau's dad ("in my day, you would have been a loser") to Bob Dole and Pat Schroeder. It was fun also to watch the development of the major chars, as B.D. goes from college quarterback to soldier to talent agent and back to the military with the Gulf War or as Duke takes his trips from governor of American Samoa to ambasador (sp?) to China and NRA lobbyist. Professor Kissinger, the Carter human rights awards and Reagan policy all come under fire in this beautiful satire. Much more worthwile than Trudeau's short books.

The only way to enjoy the Doonesbury strip is to be in it for the long haul.When I first got into it many years ago,I started to hunt for the books that came out on a fairly regular basis,Now I have most of them in my collection.Keeping the characters sorted out definitely takes an effort.Though not any artist,I have drawn (copied vs traced) most of them and one day maybe I'll mount them all as a collage.I told my wife that I might hang it over the fireplace in the living room.She said it wouldn't go with the sofa.Is she trying tell me something?
For a while I had a 3-D Jigsaw Puzzle of the White House complete with a flag as we so often see in the strip,sitting atop the TV.It just disappeared one day--guess it didn't go with the sofa either!Maybe a small ceramic one for atop my computer would be OK.
This book is just what every follower of the strip needs.It is an overview of the first 25 years of the strip and lets you become familiar with many of the characters as they were introduced.I am not sure how many we have in total,but I suspect it is around 100.
I am sure every reader has a favourite episode.I know I do and it is included in this book.Being an avid birdwatcher,I was really taken ith Dick Davenport's pursuit of the Bachman's Warbler and his success in photographing it in his final act of immortality.(page 209).
When this book came out it was the best thing around,except for the almost annual books.Then ,3 years later,in1998,we got "The Bundled Doonesbury"with a CD of all the 9000strips.Although a great idea,there was much disappointment with the CD from a technical standpoint.See my review ,also done today,December 4,2005.
So,if you are looking for something simple to show what this strip has been about all these years;this is definitely what you want.

The book was in the condition and at the price we were looking for, and made a great Christmas present for a family member.

This is one of the greatest garry trudeau collections of all tyme

It is hard to believe that people used to think this guy was a laugh riot.