Doonesbury’s Middle Age Slump

A feature story by Jesse Walker in Reason Magazine’s July 2002 issue confirms something I’ve been worried about for a while: Doonesbury isn’t what it used to be.

Walker gives us examples detailing Trudeau’s mild conservitive shift, and his more unfortunate shift toward irrelevence. I’m too young to know the strip from its beginnings in the early 70s (or earlier), but we can all compare old and new cartoons online in the Doonsebury retrospective.

Walker hasn’t entirely given up on Trudeau, though. And I still get a chuckle now and then. In the meantime, Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks has displaced old Doonesbury on the political left of syndicated comic strips.