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 over the decades from a college student to a youthful senior citizen.
Garretson Beekman Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for creating the Doonesbury comic strip.
Steve Dallas is a fictional character in the American comic strips of Berke Breathed, most famously Bloom County in the 1980s.
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.
Mark Sheldon Slackmeyer is a character in the comic strip Doonesbury.
Weltschmerz was a weekly comic strip in Canada, written and drawn by cartoonist Gareth Lind. The strip, published in alternative newsweeklies such as Eye Weekly, offers political and social satire with a regular cast of characters, similar to Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau, but with more emphasis on caricature.
Mr. Butts is a character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury. When Mike Doonesbury was asked to create an ad campaign aimed at teenage smokers, he suffered a morality crisis, and the hallucinatory Mr. Butts was the result. An eight-foot-tall cigarette with a goofy smile, Mr. Butts is the anthropomorphic personification of the tobacco industry. Stylistically he is reminiscent of Zap Comix, as pointed out by J. J. when first described to her by Mike.
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.
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.
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.
Max Headroom is a fictional character played by actor Matt Frewer. Advertised as "the first computer-generated TV presenter", Max was known for his biting commentary on a variety of topical issues, arrogant wit, stuttering, and pitch-shifting voice. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton. Max was advertised as "computer-generated", and some believed this, but he was actually actor Frewer wearing prosthetic makeup, contact lenses, and a plastic moulded suit, and sitting in front of a blue screen. Harsh lighting and other editing and recording effects heighten the illusion of a CGI character. According to his creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of television hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to youth culture, yet were not a part of it. Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television.
Frank Condon, MA, MFA, is a playwright and theatrical production director, the founding Artistic Director of River Stage, in Sacramento, California, and a professor of theatre at Cosumnes River College. Condon is best known for bringing controversial plays to the theatre.
The Max Headroom Show is a television series that debuted in the UK in 1985. It was produced by Carlton TV and aired on Channel 4, with an initial series of 13 shows. It featured actor Matt Frewer playing the role of pseudo-computer-generated talk-show host Max Headroom. It returned in 1986 for a second series of six episodes plus a Christmas special. The final series aired in 1987.
Ronald Reagan has been variously depicted in popular culture since he was elected president in 1980. Reagan also appeared numerous times in popular fiction, particularly in his role as U.S. president in the 1980s.
Rap Master Ronnie is the name of several musical comedies developed by Garry Trudeau and Elizabeth Swados throughout the 1980s, including a 1984 off-Broadway "partisan revue," a music video, and a made for TV movie starring The Smothers Brothers, Carol Kane, and Jon Cryer. The shows all share the same basic structure of a faux campaign ad for Ronald Reagan, satirizing his social policies, particularly those regarding drugs and minorities. The shows received largely mixed reviews.
