Tag: Doonesbury

Brian Walker’s two books on American newspaper comics, “The Comics Before 1945” and “The Comics Since 1945,” have been combined in a new and lavish omnibus edition, “The Comics: The Complete Collection” from Abrams Books. Walker surveys more than a century of strips and the book is jampacked with more than 1,300 images, including rare examples provided by the artists themselves. All of it is organized by decade and interspersed with creator profiles and trenchant analysis of the different genres and trends. More than a pop-culture scholar, Walker is a creator himself — since 1984 he has been part of the creative team that produces the “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois” strips. I caught up with the Connecticut author to talk about the glorious past and uncertain future of the great American comic strips. GB: As far as craft and just pure talent, ...

David L. Ulin recently reviewed “40: A Doonesbury Retrospective” for the Los Angeles Times. Here’s an excerpt… It’s been years since I thought about — really thought about — “Doonesbury,” Garry Trudeau’s Russian novel of a comic strip, in which dozens of characters loop in and out of one another’s orbits, sketching a portrait of their times. I was, for many years, a devoted reader, but somewhere in the 1990s my attention began to drift. Mostly, I suppose, this has to do with the contempt of familiarity; with 40 years of strips (more than 14,000 of them) in circulation, “Doonesbury” seems to have been with us always, a staple of the newspaper comics page, no longer new or surprising, as easy to take for granted as reruns of “Peanuts” or “B.C.” And yet, Trudeau has always had more on his ...