Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 29, 2012

She comes from a generation that doesn’t appreciate dry wit or unique noses.

.. a most prominent proboscis. She’s got Daddy’s nose!

very funny

I thought she meant that she was ging to take her new Husband’s last name and not be a “Doonsbury” any more.

Comes the Revolution!

A new broom sweeps clean!

She should get stuffed tiger and call the strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”

How long til Jeff turns to the Duke side of the Force?

Shooting Star — Way to go kiddo…

I wish they’d change her hairstyle—she’s had it that way since she was about in 3rd grade. Sometime in the 1990s anyway. It was when Mike first got engaged to Kim and introduced her to Alex, I think—the hairstyle was Kim’s idea and probably very fashionable at the time, but it’s time for a change.

Hey, wait, this isn’t political at all! What’s Trudeau trying to pull here? Spooky….

VarnesIt is so subtly political, that you might miss it it… To change or not to change, that is the question….

Doesn’t she wear a wedding ring?

As someone who was an 11-year-old kid when I first started following this strip around 1994, it does seem pretty wild that Alex, of all people, ended up being the axis, if modern Doonesbury can be said to have an axis. Since she was the most prominent of the kid characters at the time (Jeff was very minor back then and Sam was still a toddler), it naturally caught my eye whenever she made one of her now-and-then appearances. Sure, she was a few years younger than me, but she was the closest thing I had to a “hook” in the world of this comic strip that was usually very adult and very over my head. Still, she was very much a third-tier figure. That started to change right around the time J.J. left Mike, and the next few years after that focused pretty tightly on Mike’s family life. During that time I entered my teen years and suddenly the strip started making a lot more sense. Meanwhile, there was Alex, slowly graduating from third tier to second, to higher-second, and finally to this place we’re at now, where she’s demanding that all the “old hippie characters” be dumped. Come on, Alex——one of them was your nanny! X)

Yeah, and get a REAL artist to draw her! About stinking time!

What? Does Trudeau think we “old people” aren’t interesting?

The schnoz does have to go….it’s weird!

I hope they get a talking dog. So cute!

Bye bye, Zeke.

So Doonesbury is going to turn into Newsweek, and Alex is Tina Brown with a popsiclestick nose.

why the change??

So much for passing it on to the younger generation!And @brickster: The symbolism is subtle but not necessarily political but rather philosophical.

She promises CHANGE! Better stay with the devil you know.

You tell her Dad.

Oh, Gary, say it isn’t so!!!

Every generation sees the next as either irresponsible, shallow, or morons. This time Americans have “nailed it”.(with very few exceptions)

Great call, brickster…thanx.

No, No, NO! You’re all missing the point completely. This is Trudeau’s latest shot across the bow in his long bitter feud with Lynn Johnston. What? You aren’t familiar with the “Doonesbury/For Better For Worse” war? It’s been raging for years…

FBFW is the other most prominent strip in which the characters age (there’s Gasoline Alley, but that’s a dinosaur), and Johnston’s original idea was to turn the focus of her strip to Mike and his family. Of course, that didn’t end up happening, and this is Trudeau getting in a dig.

For shame, GT, for shame, picking on an old retired lady like that. Save it for the parking lot after the next Ruebens…

Why are his glasses BELOW his nose?????

Speaking of noses, Alex’s nose was prettied up for her wedding, but now has regressed to its old self. However, she doesn’t need a cookie-cutter face. IMO. I like her as she is.

The Generation of New Rules. Old rules suck, like old folks.

Her nose has actually zigzagged over time. When she was a really little kid, it was just like Mike’s, but when she was a preteen, it got smaller for a few years. Gave her a more kid-like appearance. It wasn’t until she entered adolescence that it grew to Mike proportions again.

Wait I didn’t think Alex was gonna take over as the main character until she got divorced. [Face it, folks, it’s inevitable.]

Perhaps this is Trudeau saying that HE is not turning his strip over to a younger cartoonist anytime in the foreseeable future.

I like her nose!

What? No Zipper?

The torch has been passed to a new generation…

Thank you GT for being political! Especially drawing attention to the shameful voter suppression situation we are now involved in. Both political parties should just want as many registered voters to vote as possible, whoever benefits in the end.

I’m glad Trudeau finally got off the political junk and decided this is a “COMIC” strip.. He should make up his mind… does he want to be an “American Hater” or a comic strip maker. Seems he just can’t keep off the political crap. My grandkids pass up Doonesbury most of the time because they say, “It isn’t funny”. Seems Trudeau likes to put his own biased opinions into his comics just to slime America. FOO!!!

In a way, I think the Doonesbury nose has become sort of like Mickey Mouse’s ears——an abstract symbol rooted in a more primitive time. Mickey’s ears, in case you’ve never noticed, are physically impossible——they look exactly the same from every angle, no matter which way he turns his head. He was designed that way very early on because under the conditions he was created in, his first film had to be created at lightning speed, so his ears were an odd visual trick that could be drawn very quickly without worrying about changing perspective. That ear thing just stuck, even as the rest of the design eventually became more refined, more realistic, and more three-dimensional. The result: an otherwise three-dimensional character with a bizarre, abstract symbol on his head.When Doonesbury started, it was in a much simpler, looser style where cartoon symbols were much broader, and long, squarish noses were a staple of that. They didn’t out at all then, really. But as Trudeau’s style has become more solid and more realistic over time, that long, squared-off schnozz stands out more and more as an abstract relic, looking increasingly out of place. X)

Why mess wirh a good thing … one of the few ‘comics’ that bothers to deal with reaiity and is not afraid to have a firm point of view?

All I care about is Walden Puddle, and nobody wants to tell me how its doing.