Surprised By . . . Doonesbury

[richardf8]

Every once in a while I find laughing out loud at a newspaper strip that normally sucks. Today that happened for my with the insufferable GB Trudeau's Doonesbury. Here is a link to the strip:

Rare funny Doonesbury

The setup runs in the well greased rails of every war movie cliche imaginable. Soldier wishes he could be there for his kid. But in all those war movie cliches, one gets a sense that this is somehow an abstract wish, a wish to be where he isn't. In the fourth panel, Trudeau stands that cliche on its head by jerking the rug of abstraction out from under it. Sam is posing one of those questions that every parent dreads. By having the mother offer to foist this one off on the father inverts another tired cliche, that of the father squirming and palming the kid off on the mother the moment the yicky topic is first raised. This strip had me laughing out loud because of the disconnect between the soldier's abstract wish and the concrete reality of the wish being granted.

Comments

[lordrunningclam.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's kind of a nice twist ending. Tragically, I'm old enough to remember when Doonebury was really great. It's been quite some time now, though. I've recently replaced Doonsbury on my Yahoo homepage with Boondocks, so I never see it anymore.

[visservoldemort.livejournal.com]

That is rather humorous. I read Trudea daily, even though he isn't that funny anymore. Let us just say that I do it out of respect for former greatness, and the occasional gem such as this.

[visservoldemort.livejournal.com]

P.S: I know of it's former glory days because up until a year ago, one could read the entire 30 year archive for free. I did, using up countless hours of free time. Oddly enough, it's how I first learnt about Iran-Contra...