If Garry Trudeau's savagely skewed vision holds similar meaning for you, check out Doonesbury Flashbacks: 25 Years of Serious Fun. This groundbreaking CD-ROM contains every Doonesbury strip from 1970 to mid-1995, some 9,000 in all. The art is clean-looking, and text is easy to read. Color Sunday strips are a little harder to view, but a magnifying glass feature lets you look at each individual panel in detail. Like the great comic strips of the past, Trudeau's creation works on a number of levels. Doonesbury helped my young mind understand issues like Vietnam and Watergate. As I matured, the strip also grew in complexity, taking on the subtler topics of the Me and the Greed Decades. First names aside, Doonesbury also had the strange habit of mimicking events in my life: Mike's unemployment and subsequent move into the computer field eerily mirrored my own situation.
In that same spirit, there are a number of ways to approach Doonesbury Flashbacks. Begin in October, 1970, and scroll down. Accompanying headlines and factoids provide context for each strip. There is a timeline feature and a political index. A multimedia map takes viewers to disparate locations like Walden commune and American Samoa. An excellent search engine rounds out the disc. If you look for Joanie Caucus, a scrolling screen displaying every Joanie strip (and nothing else) appears. You can perform searches using multiple characters (Zonker and Mark Spitz, anyone?), dates, even dialogue. You can even print cartoons and festoon your refrigerator with your favorites.
Take Uncle Duke, sure to be a favorite on Frigidaires everywhere. Perhaps no character since Ignatz Mouse has best exemplified the sheer fun readers find in unadulterated malfeasance. While Hunter S. Thompson is known to be displeased by Trudeau's thinly-veiled caricature ("If I ever catch the little bastard, I'll rip his lungs out!"), it has also helped sell a lot of copies of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Duke is an anti-Jiminy Cricket, a cynical piper who serves as tour guide to the id.
Doonesbury Flashbacks also includes some unexpected multimedia goodies. Menu screens include clever animations. You can play video clips from the legendary 1977 television special (and read the full script), check out magazine covers drawn by Trudeau, and view a bibliography of all things Doonesbury. There's also a trivia quiz, hosted by Mike and showcase girl Boopsie.
As the lumbering dinosaurs of the comics pages shuffle toward senility, too many creative cartoons (Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County/Outland) have opted for early extinction.
Doonesbury Flashbacks is a refreshing reminder of why this sharp, funny, and relevant strip is still the one that matters.
Mike Butzgyis a multimedia writer and freelancer who lives in Raleigh, NC. He can be reached at atomicrom@aol.com.
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