History Comicstrip / Doonesbury

The strip won Trudeau the UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize for Editorial Cartooning in 1975, the first of only two daily comic strips to have ever won that award, the other being Berke Breathed's ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' in 1987. A one-shot AnimatedAdaptation, ''WesternAnimation/ADoonesburySpecial'', was produced in 1977; it won a Jury Special Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the MediaNotes/AcademyAwardForBestAnimatedShortFilm in 1978.

The strip won Trudeau the UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize for Editorial Cartooning in 1975, the first of only two daily comic strips to have ever won that award, the other being Berke Breathed's ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' in 1987. A one-shot AnimatedAdaptation, ''WesternAnimation/ADoonesburySpecial'', was produced in 1977; it won a Jury Special Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the UsefulNotes/AcademyAwardForBestAnimatedShortFilm in 1978.

* DisabledLoveInterest: [[GenderBlenderName Alex's]] boyfriend Toggle, a young Iraq war vet with PTSD and some brain damage.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}'': A September 17, 1989 strip features a session of Congress, during which Lacey Barnes, as part of the House Armed Services Committee, points out to an Air Force General that for the cost of ''one'' of his proposed B-2 stealth bombers (untested and of unknown reliability), the military could buy 500 reliable and virtually undetectable cruise missiles:

* BrainBleach: A July 24, 2016, Sunday strip shows the entire ensemble rendered completely speechless by the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio[[note]]At which UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump secured the nomination as the Republican candidates for President of the United States[[/note]], until:

* TactfulTranslation: Honey Huan's original purpose was translating and "softening" Duke's speeches and words during his stint as ambassador to China.

* OffModel: Kim looks a bit odd in the [[http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2012/06/18 June 18, 2012 strip.]] Looking a bit like she's stoned.

* BreakingPointSwearing: The author pushed to allow B.D. to swear when he wakes up after losing a leg in Iraq. This is significant because newspaper comics have extremely strict clamps on their subject matter. A few papers dropped the strip. Most simply edited the line. A few kept it as-is, with the paper's editor stating it was {{justified|Trope}}.
-->'''B.D.:''' Son of a '''''bitch'''''!

** LaserGuidedKarma: Their ridiculous story [[http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1974/03/19 wound up on the cover]] of ''Time'' magazine.

** Most notably Duke. He started off as a one-week joke character whose basic punchline was the surrealism of Creator/HunterSThompson being Zonker's uncle, with a few Thompson-based in-jokes thrown in. Trudeau became so enamored of the character that he first began having occasional week-long gags of Duke at his farm (based on Thompson's Owl Ranch), then expanded the character beyond a Thompson parody to have a full history of his own and an involvement in geopolitics. By a few years after his first appearance he'd become one of the most frequently featured characters in the strip, to the point he's one of only a few to receive a book entirely dedicated to his strips.

** Most notably Duke. He started off as a one-week joke character whose basic punchline was the surrealism of Creator/HunterSThompson being Zonker's uncle, with a few Thompson-based in-jokes thrown in. Trudeau became so enamored of the character that he first began having occasional week-long gags of Duke at his farm (based on Thompson's Owl Ranch), then expanded the character beyond a Thompson parody to have a full history of his own and an involvement in geopolitics. A few years after the character's first appearance he became one of the most frequently featured characters in the strip, to the point he's one of only a few to receive a book entirely dedicated to his strips.

** Most notably Duke. He started off as a one-week joke whose basic punchline was the surrealism of Hunter S. Thompson being Zonker's uncle, with a few Thompson-based in-jokes thrown in. Trudeau became so enamored of the character that he first began having occasional week-long gags of Duke at his farm (based on Thompson's Owl Ranch), then expanded the character beyond a Thompson parody to have a full history of his own and an involvement in geopolitics. A few years after the character's first appearance he became one of the most frequently featured characters in the strip, to the point he's one of only a few to receive a book entirely dedicated to his strips.

** Averted with Uncle Duke, even after he was ''buried six feet under in a coffin''. [[spoiler:Turns out he was zombified for a while.]] Considering he ages more slowly than the rest of the cast (if at all), even after Hunter S. Thompson died, you have to wonder. (When Duke read Thompson's obituary, his (Duke's) head exploded and he spent a week in a sort of hallucinatory fugue state. Appropriate, all things considered.)

* AnyoneCanDie: ''Doonesbury'' was the first mainstream humor comic strip to kill off a character, something which caused quite a stir at the time (1986). The deceased, Dick Davenport, was an elderly birdwatcher who'd been a recurring character for years. He suffered a massive heart attack while birding but managed to stay alive just long enough to fulfill his life's dream of photographing an extremely rare bird. His last word, spoken right after snapping the picture, was "Immortality.")

* AnyoneCanDie: ''Doonesbury'' was the first mainstream humor comic strip to kill off a character, which caused quite a stir at the time (1986). The deceased, Dick Davenport, was an elderly birdwatcher who'd been a recurring character for years. He suffered a massive heart attack while birding but managed to stay alive just long enough to fulfill his life's dream of photographing an extremely rare bird. His last word, spoken right after snapping the picture, was "Immortality.")

* AnyoneCanDie: ''Doonesbury'' was the first mainstream humor comic strip to kill off a character, which caused quite a stir at the time (1986) and landed it on the cover of ''[[Magazine/TimeMagazine Time]]'' magazine. The deceased, Dick Davenport, was an elderly birdwatcher who had been a recurring character for years. He suffered a massive heart attack while birding but managed to stay alive just long enough to fulfill his life's dream of photographing an extremely rare bird (his last word, spoken right after snapping the picture, was "Immortality.")

* PrecisionFStrike: B.D. on learning he lost a leg.
-->'''B.D.:''' Son of a '''''bitch'''''!

** Also Duke is a thinly disguised and parodied and totally distorted [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson Hunter S. Thompson]]. When Thompson died, Duke learning about the ExpyCoexistence caused him to experience some strange things (well, maybe not that strange by ''his'' standards...).

** Also Duke is a thinly disguised and parodied and totally distorted [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson Hunter S. Thompson]]. When Thompson died Duke experienced some strange things (well, not too strange for him).

Despite the expanded scope of the series, the characters remained college students for about 13 years, with the only real change being the group moving off campus into a nearby commune. This changed with a two-year SeriesHiatus in 1983–84; Trudeau came up with the idea of doing a stage {{musical}} based upon the strip, which centered around the graduation of the characters from college. After a brief run on Broadway, the strip returned, now moving in real time as the characters grew older, married, had kids, divorced, and died. The strip also became more biting with its political satire, with increasing appearances by television reporter Roland Hedley (who was introduced prior to the hiatus) and surrealistic storylines like Hedley's tour of UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan's brain and Mr. Butts, a life-sized talking cigarette who shills for the tobacco industry.

** Averted with Uncle Duke, even after he was ''buried six feet under in a coffin''. [[spoiler:Turns out he was zombified for a while.]] Considering the man never ages with the rest of the cast, even after Hunter S. Thompson died, you have to wonder. (When Duke read Thompson's obituary, his (Duke's) head exploded and he spent a week in a sort of hallucinatory fugue state. Appropriate, all things considered.)

** Strangely enough, while everyone else has aged normally since 1984, Uncle Duke does not age, appearing to be constantly in his late 40's since he first appeared more than 30 years ago. This means that his nephew Zonker, who was a college student when he first met Duke, is now about the same age as him. No one appears to have noticed.