Doonesbury Watch: This couple doesn't have a future, do they? (Well, yes and no)

DOONESBURY by G. B. Trudeau - Monday [click to enlarge]


by Ken

To the best of my recollection, the last time we checked in on the Classic Doonebury reruns, it was to return to yet another critical moment in the life and times of Joanie Caucus. Joanie, you'll recall (or see "When the young(er) Joanie Caucus met up with the Doonesbury gang"), first hooked up with Mike and Mark when they picked her up as a hitchhiker, having walked out on her abusive first husband.

Joanie meets Mark S and Mike D, then Zonker H
[Click on any strip to enlarge it]

DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau

Day 1

Day 2

Two days later


More recently we were reminded that when Joanie walked out on her husband, she also walked out on her baby daughter, J.J. This came up, logically enough, when J.J. suddenly reappeared in her life. In a remarkably short time J.J. has managed to pack in an impressive amount of chaos, until her spaced-out boyfriend Zeke kicked up the chaos level a notch too high even for her, burning down the house they were living in.

Which has led to one of the great turning points in Doonesbury history: when Mike, now a Walden senior, came under the spell of J.J. The difference now is that we experience it with knowledge of the immense amount of history that flowed from it. But as we've been reminded, it was hardly an auspicious beginning.

It wasn't the first strip in this sequence, the one I've put at the top of this post, that made me feel I had to share it, or this one that followed:

Tuesday


No, it was the next one, the one that reappeared Wednesday. Taking it in, all I could think was: Talk about two people who are completely mismatched!

Wednesday


The heart wants what it wants, however, and while over the long haul the mismatchedness turned out to be oh-so-true, it also turned out to be far from the whole story of J.J. and Mike.

To return to the immediate future (past, that is), though, here's how "Classic" developments have developed since Wednesday:

Thursday

Friday

Saturday



IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE DOONESBURY HISTORY --

You can fill in the basic blanks from either the official Doonesbury "The Cast" page or Wikipedia's list of Main characters, with particular reference to J.J. and Alex. From there you can online-search your way to Doonesbury insanity.

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