Andy Lippincott

Last updated
Andy Lippincott
Publication information
Publisher Universal Press Syndicate
Created by Garry Trudeau

Andy Lippincott is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury . An attorney, he is the openly homosexual best-friend of Joanie Caucus, one of the core members of the strip's ensemble cast. Although Joanie initially sees Andy as a potential romantic partner, the two become best friends, and she supports him as he navigates the difficulties of gay culture in the 1980s, including his eventual contraction of HIV and subsequent death from the disease.

Contents

Andy is significant for a number of reasons in the history of newspaper comics, including being the first openly gay character and the first character to die of AIDS.

Publication history

The character first appears in January 1976, in a law library. Joanie Caucus becomes attracted to him before Lippincott says he is gay. [1] Joanie is heartbroken, and takes some time to recover. Lippincott contributes position papers to Virginia Slade's failed run for Congress in 1976. He disappears from the strip for a few years after this storyline.

In 1982, the character reappears as an organizer for the Bay Area Gay Alliance, and contributes to the congressional re-election of Lacey Davenport. In 1989 he returns to the strip again when he is diagnosed with AIDS. Over the course of the next year, Lippincott's battles with the disease, and eventual death from it, helped bring the AIDS crisis into popular culture. Ultimately, he is shown dying to the sound of the Beach Boys' song "Wouldn't It Be Nice", finally fulfilling his wish to hear the (then newly released) CD version of their album Pet Sounds . [2]

Shortly thereafter, Andy made posthumous appearances in the strip, [3] making several days of appearances in a self-made video shown during his memorial service. [4] He later appears in the dreams of Joanie and Mark Slackmeyer, helping the latter come to terms with his own homosexuality.

Significance

This storyline led to more notability for Garry Trudeau, [5] but three newspapers of the 900 carrying the strip refused to publish it as being in bad taste. [6]

Andy Lippincott may be the only fictional character with a panel on the AIDS quilt. The panel (created by G. Scott Austen, Marceo Miranda and Juan-Carlos Castano) reads: "In Loving Memory: Andy Lippincott 1945–1990. Community leader, conservationist, author, Olympic medalist, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!" The panel hangs in The NAMES Project Foundation's offices in Atlanta and was not actually sewn into a block of The AIDS Memorial Quilt. [note 1]

Notes

  1. ↑ Details on Lippincott's panel for the AIDS quilt from the Doonesbury Flashbacks computer program by Garry Trudeau, published by Mindscape in 1995 ( ISBN   0791118657).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comic strip</span> Short serialized comics

A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.

Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college student to a youthful senior citizen over the decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garry Trudeau</span> American cartoonist (born 1948)

Garretson Beekman Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for creating the Doonesbury comic strip. Trudeau is also the creator and executive producer of the Amazon Studios political comedy series Alpha House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkeley Breathed</span> American cartoonist and author (born 1957)

Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author, director, and screenwriter, known for his comic strips Bloom County, Outland, and Opus. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Slackmeyer</span> Comics character

Mark Sheldon Slackmeyer is a character in the comic strip Doonesbury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Mills</span> American cartoonist

Jerry A. Mills was an openly gay cartoonist known for his comic strip Poppers, which is credited as one of the first comic strips to develop multi-dimensional gay characters. Scholars have stated that while earlier comics had relied on stereotypes such as the nelly queen or muscleman, Mills presented his characters with lives beyond the stereotypes. His work is also credited as having helped shape comics for the LGBTQ+ community and its members.

Michael James "Mike" Doonesbury is the main character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury. He started out as a nerdish freshman from Tulsa at the fictional Walden College, and shared a dorm room with B.D. Currently he is married to Kim Rosenthal, and divorced from J.J. Caucus. Mike's daughter, Alex continued to live with Mike and Kim, until she left to attend MIT. He has a younger brother, Benjamin, and a widowed mother who died in late 2010.

Joanie Caucus is a fictional character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.

Jimmy Thudpucker is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury, created by Garry Trudeau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roland Hedley</span> Comics character

Roland Burton Hedley, III is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau, inspired by the on-air style of the veteran US reporter Sam Donaldson.

Lacey Davenport is a fictional character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury. She is often said to be based on Millicent Fenwick, a Republican member of Congress from New Jersey, although Trudeau has denied this link.

Ron Headrest is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT themes in comics</span>

In comics, LGBT themes are a relatively new concept, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) themes and characters were historically omitted from the content of comic books and their comic strip predecessors due to anti-gay censorship. LGBT existence was included only via innuendo, subtext and inference. However the practice of hiding LGBT characters in the early part of the twentieth century evolved into open inclusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and comics explored the challenges of coming-out, societal discrimination, and personal and romantic relationships between gay characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist</span> American comic series

"The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist" was an American comics series, written by Michael O'Donoghue and drawn by Frank Springer. From January 1965, it was serialized in the magazine Evergreen Review, and later published in book form as a Grove Press hardcover in 1968 and trade paperback in 1969. It was reissued as a trade paperback in 1986.

<i>Doonesbury</i> (musical)

Doonesbury, also known as Doonesbury: A Musical Comedy, is a 1983 musical with a book and lyrics by Garry Trudeau and music by Elizabeth Swados.

Robert Triptow is an American writer and artist. He is known primarily for creating gay- and bisexual-themed comics and for editing Gay Comix in the 1980s, and he was identified by underground comix pioneer Lee Marrs as "the last of the underground cartoonists."


In American mainstream comics, LGBT themes and characters were historically omitted intentionally from the content of comic books, due to either formal censorship or the perception that comics were for children and thus LGBT themes were somehow inappropriate. With any mention of homosexuality in mainstream United States comics forbidden by the Comics Code Authority (CCA) until 1989, earlier attempts at exploring these issues in the US took the form of subtle hints or subtext regarding a character's sexual orientation. LGBT themes were tackled earlier in underground comix from the early 1970s onward. Independently published one-off comic books and series, often produced by gay creators and featuring autobiographical storylines, tackled political issues of interest to LGBT readers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homosexuality in the Batman franchise</span> Gay interpretations of Batman

Gay interpretations have been part of the academic study of the Batman franchise at least since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent that "Batman stories are psychologically homosexual". Several characters in the Modern Age Batman comic books are expressly gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

References

  1. ↑ Villemez, Jason (December 26, 2019). "Our History, Our Future – The first gay character in a comic strip". Philadelphia Gay News . Mark Segal . Retrieved 22 February 2020.
  2. ↑ Trudeau, Garry (24 May 1990). "Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 24, 1990 – GoComics.com". GoComics. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  3. ↑ Trudeau, Garry (25 May 1990). "Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 25, 1990 – GoComics.com". GoComics. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  4. ↑ Trudeau, Garry (28 May 1990). "Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 28, 1990 – GoComics.com". GoComics. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  5. ↑ "Doonesbury comic highlights sacrifices of war". The Providence Journal . April 23, 2004. Retrieved 2009-01-14.
  6. ↑ "3 Papers Cut Dooesbury AIDS Story". Miami Herald . April 10, 1989. Retrieved 2009-01-14.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.