G. B. Trudeau - 40. A Doonesbury Retrospective 1970 to 1979

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A t my high school, which for many was not a pleasant place, doone was one of the more benign pejoratives. A doone was akin to a doofusa clueless sort, but without any mean to him. His innocence conveyed a kind of grace, so the doone was often held in some affection by his posse.

At least ours was. My friend Charles Pillsbury didnt ask for comic strip immortality, but he also didnt seem to mind much when I conflated his good nature and his good name to produce Doonesburys title. Which proved he was a doone. Seriously, case closed. A pencil-nosed cartoon avatar has followed him around his entire adult life, and hes never once complained. Who could be that good natured? Only a doone.

There were other inspirations for Mike Doonesburysome of them autobiographicalbut Charlie furnished the hard kernel of decency that allowed Mike to survive a lifetime of moral hazard. Not that his decency was always conspicuous. Mikes early emotional development wasnt just arrested; it sometimes appeared to reverse course. Humiliation piled upon humiliation, always triggered by a puzzling grandiosity. (His opening lines in the strip: Hi, there! My names Mike Doonesbury! I hail from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and women adore me!)

With that tragically inept start, who could have foreseen that Mike was destined to become the Richie Cunningham of the strip, all common sense and groundedness? True, it took years for him to completely free himself of the poor choices and wild course corrections of youth, but for the most part he evolved into the groups designated grown-up. His main job was to provide contrast, to play magnetic north as everyone around him headed south. When, during the summer of 1986, a half-dozen converging story lines dumped all the principal characters on Mikes doorstep simultaneously, he alone was qualified to cope, to keep the place from burning down until I could contrive a loft-clearing police bust.