Wow. What to say about today's strip? That Mr. Covid is now another iconic avatar in the GBT Universe? The fact that with 300,000 dead there are people who are still in denial? Or that I find myself thinking more and more like Mike in the last panel? 

Mike lives in Bellefonte? Who knew?

Today’s strip is funny and sad at the same time. That last panel is spot on! It’s so tragic that people do actually say and believe all of those statements. I live in an area of the country that was devastated early on, and continues to be so because of people like these. My governor is correct in calling them “knuckleheads."

I have mixed feelings about today's strip, with Mike and...do we call him Mr. Covid? Because, wow, harsh, and wow, true.

Sock garters! In the 40-years-ago-today Flashback strip Rick is wearing sock garters. My grandfather wore sock garters.

I used to subscribe to a magazine about PC computing. It's amazing to realize that Alex wanted a Pentium 25 years ago. 

I remember reading today's strip when it was originally published, and thinking how heartbreaking it was for J.J. to leave her husband and daughter on a whim. Given Zeke's slacker behavior since then, I've always thought that J.J. kind of got what she deserved.

As a member of the team that worked on Dbury@50 : The Complete Digital Doonesbury, I’d like to play some trumpet here -- a tune called “I Think You’re Going To Like This Thing.” To start with, the gleaming black box, inspired by the Beatles’ White Album, contains three elements. One is a commemorative poster featuring new pencil portraits of 63 characters, in order of first appearance in the strip.

Then there’s the main event: a flash drive bearing all the strips from day one until recently – over 15,000 of them. For the first three decades or so, Doonesbury books only contained around 85% of the strips, as GBT edited out those he was less keen on. The Dbury@50 flash drive contains all the strips. When Doonesbury’s syndicate started digitizing in the early '90s, decades of Sundays were preserved at relatively low rez. In preparing this flash drive we were able to upgrade all those early Sunday strip scans, so everything is in bright, utterly-readable shape.*

The third element in the box is the User Manual, which devotes four pages to each year of the strip -- a paragraph of historical context, reminding/telling readers what was happening culturally that year; then a three-page narrative of essential plotlines and story arcs, illustrated with strips, lift art, and memorable lines of dialogue; then an index with every week of six dailies** and every Sunday strip “titled” --  identified by subject matter. The names of strip characters and of real-life characters are color-coded (blue and red respectively) so you can spot them. With this index you can find the week where Duke was zombified, or B.D. lost his leg, or Alex was born, or Queen Elizabeth contacted Zonker. The same index is used as the navigational menu on the flash drive.

The whole team (creator Garry Trudeau, designers George Corsillo and Susan McCaslin, editor Lucas Wetzel, and mwah) was glad to have this project to focus on during the first months of COVID-19. We hope Doonesbury readers will enjoy exploring it in the months ahead, as the virus makes its way into welcoming arms. Onward!

* Note: The USB flash drive is intended for laptop and desktop computers running on MacOS (10.10 or later) and Windows (7 or later) only and is NOT compatible with smartphones, tablets, or most Chromebooks. Not that you’d be likely to stick a flash drive in a phone – just giving you a heads-up. 

** In the early months of the strip, GBT would change subjects and characters daily or every few days, but he soon settled into a rhythm: each week of six dailies is a story line unit, separate from the subject matter of the Sundays (which are created on a different schedule).

A recent Steve Kornacki book, The Red and The Blue, has the answer to B.D.'s question.

Incredible colors in today's strip, moving from cool, calming blues in the first several frames, through pink/orange shading, to the flaming red dominating the entire last frame, mirroring B.D.’s irrational build-up to a mindless Republican-style rage over nothing. I do wonder what B.D.’s take on Trumpism looks like. We know he was a fan of Sarah Palin back in the day (remember the action figure he got for Sam?), but much time has passed since then, and B.D.’s emotional maturation has presumably continued. In the end, I have to believe that Trump’s own cowardice, along with his reprehensible conduct toward veterans and their families, would finally cause B.D. to second-guess his lifelong support of the GOP. 

Hahaha. I see what you did there today! Nice color palette! I also enjoyed Roland's "I'm a Loser" tweet. I love being earwormed by The Beatles!

I've wondered about the party colours too. Everywhere else, the left wingers get red and the right wingers get blue. The Red Menace was about Communists, not right-wing Republicans. Ahh. I get it now.

Re Today's SAY WHAT? ("If you can loot businesses, burn down buildings, engage in a protest, you can also go to a Christmas party." -- Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, asked why White House indoor holiday parties continue despite the CDC asking Americans to forego such gatherings): If you can loot the government, burn down the Constitution, engage in sedition, you can also go to a Christmas party. TIFIFY, Ms. McEnany. 

SAY WHAT? is a good day starter.

As many of you have noticed, the FLASHBACKS page is visible on some days, on others not. Our tech crew is working on the problem, but it may continue for a bit -- hence this post. Sorry for the interruption of reading flow! UPDATE: Problem solved!

It's good to see the Doonesbury younger generation are successfully ignoring reality.

Great article on Doonesbury's 50th and the new book in the Washington Post. Fun to see Garry's pick of key strips. Now that the election is over, I hope we can see more about the regular characters; their evolution has been one of the most enjoyable features of the strip over the years. What an incredible achievement. If you were going to teach a course on the boomer generation, you could not find a better text than Doonesbury. It deals with all life's problems, and the characters grow -- except maybe for Duke. My favorite week I think was when long-dead Dick Davenport appeared to accompany Lacey, suffering with dementia, to heaven. She was told not to criticize the drapes since Mrs. God picked them. I made copies and shared them with Episcopal priest friends.

Sorry that you (and us overseas) are still enduring Trump craziness even after he lost. He should just go away with dignity, for once. But on the bright side, maybe Trump and Giuliani's antics provide a more healthy road back to Normal, like women wailing and pounding on the coffin at a funeral. The demonstrative grieving (or laughing?) gets it all out, for everyone, instead of bits of communal emotion still being bottled up inside by survivors (which is what you are).

I have been reading Doonesbury since I was a kid. Watching these characters grow old as I did, and turn gray as I did, have kids, change, and grow -- this is a unique comic that should go down in history. As what, I don't know. But it certainly should be remembered. 

Thursday's tweet shows that Roland is confused again. The judge did not tell Rudy Giuliani to "tuck in his shirt" -- it was his suit that was the problem. Rudy was told to take that, and his case, out of the courtroom until it was more presentable. Surely a reasonable request.