Our own Doonesbury flashback: When Joanie Caucus joined Elizabeth Warren's Senate staff

DOONESBURY -- Monday, Februay 4, 2013

[Click on any of today's strips to enlarge -- significantly!]

by Ken

A couple of weeks ago, in presenting that Sunday's Doonesbury comparison of "Banskter Life in the U.S. vs. Iceland," I got sidetracked into reflecting on the shock of radio guy Mark Slackmeyer's white hair, and pointed out:

Simpsons creator Matt Groening, you'll recall, made the conscious decision at the outset that his characters wouldn't age, that they would remain pretty much locked in time. Garry Trudeau has taken the opposite tack. I don't know of any comic strip whose cast of characters has been subjected so thoroughgoingly to the vicissitudes of time. (The website has long had a Flashbacks page, where on any given day we can see the strips that appeared 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, and 40 years ago.)

I also recalled the dramatic instance of the series "in which our old companion Joanie Caucus came out of retirement to join the staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (of whose campaign she had been a zealous supporter), only to find herself feeling like a dinosaur amid the toddlerish other staffers," and I added parenthetically that "we really should take a look at that whole series one of these days."

Today's the day. The series to which I was referring had only just been revived in Doonesbury "Flashback" form, having originally appeared in Februay 2013, with a follow-up series the following month.


Continuation of Week 1 (February 4–9, 2013)

DOONESBURY -- Tuesday


DOONESBURY -- Wednesday


DOONESBURY -- Thursday


DOONESBURY -- Friday


DOONESBURY -- Saturday



Week 2 (March 18–23, 2013)

DOONESBURY -- Monday


DOONESBURY -- Tuesday


DOONESBURY -- Wednesday


DOONESBURY -- Thursday


DOONESBURY -- Friday


DOONESBURY -- Saturday


The other principal players in these strips are:

• Joanie's granddaughter Alex, who has since -- in June -- both gotten her Ph.D. and given birth to twins, making Joanie a great-grandmother;

• Joanie's husband, Rick Redfern, "best known [according to his Doonesbury website "cast bio"] for his long career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter for the Washington Post." After being "booted from the Post," Rick --

suddenly [found] himself blogging for a living, ever in search of eyeballs and a paycheck. Long baffled and frustrated by his slacker son Jeff’s unearned sense of entitlement, Redfern suffered the indignity of watching him strike bestseller gold as the Facebook folk hero "Red Rascal” and buy a 12-bedroom mansion. Rick is also puzzled by the fact that he is married to a grandmother. He now writes for the Huffington Post.

I see that for much of "The Cast (Who's Who on Planet Doonesbury)" we're told that "bio updates are coming soon." However, the bios of Joanie, Rick, and Alex's father (Joanie's onetime son-in-law), Mike Doonesbury, have already been updated. I especially like -- or maybe just identify with -- the end of Mike's current bio:

Mike's annual Summer Fantasy remains a highlight of his year, and he still pitches decent startup ideas to longtime venture capitalist pal Bernie. The two graying colleagues console one another over the fact that to attractive young women they are now just a couple of generic Old Guys, and hence invisible.

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