It's a bad week to be a comic strip character

[womzilla]

Spoilers for this week's Doonesbury, Get Fuzzy, Gasoline Alley, and Heart of the City are ahead.



Get Fuzzy's main human character, Rob Wilco, has a brother in the armed services. Monday it was announced that he'd lost a leg in battle in Iraq.

One of the three foundational characters of Doonesbury is the former football star B. D., who has never been seen without some sort of helmet, either football or (during his frequent military call-ups from the Army Reserves), infantry. Monday, he was badly wounded in Iraq; today it was revealed that his left leg is gone above the knee. His helmet was also amputated, which seems like an even greater wound.

In Heart of the City, Heart's (nameless) mother lost her job. Monday's strip is one of the best cartoonish visual expressions of despair I've ever seen.

And, finally, Gasoline Alley. Gasoline Alley is one of the Grand Old Strips, introduced at the end of the Great War. The original star was Walt Wallet, proprietor of a gas station (hence the name of the strip), who discovered an abandoned baby and raised him as his son. Gasoline Alley has always been best known for the fact that, unlike almost all other strips, its characters age in real time, which means that Walt is now somewhere around 105 years old. He's outlived Frank King, his creator, by thirty-five years. It's very clear from the events of the last week that Walt has driven his last drive.



I don't disapprove of any of these artistic choices; comic strips should feel free to incorporate the entire range of human experience. It's just a bit much all at once. But that's how life is.

Comments

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

That's a horrible week! Thanks for the background on Gasoline Alley - I didn't know about it.

Seeing B. D. without his helmet made me feel real old.

Maybe I'll start reading daily strips again - it's been awhile. "Heart of the City" and "Rose is Rose" have always been two favorites.

And "Zippy", of course, although he's a little limited.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

The Doonesbury strip is mightly powerful and understated.

[avram]

The same panel revealed BD without his leg and without his helmet; it was the helmet's absence that shocked me more.

Strange wound

[(Anonymous)]

"his left leg is gone above the knee."

But it's still there below the knee?

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Today's Get Fuzzy makes a strong statement on the official reaction to war injuries and deaths. To me, that and Doonesbury go with the Seattle paper printing the picture of flag-draped coffins.

On B.D.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Maybe I need new glasses, but it never occurred to me that it was B.D. who was hit until I read the strip today. I thought he was the one talking and his friend was shot. Oh, well.

I think this is the right move for Doonesbury. It has been lackluster for a while and something was needed to move the characters along.

I could be picky and point out that for a field hospital, they did a very quick and neat job of amputating his leg without damaging his pants, but I won't. Wasn't B.D. a POW during Viet Nam? Seems to me I remember Phred as part of that.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

It seems appropriate the the one character whose politics have remained pretty much unshakable from day-one be the one this happens to.
I grew up with his strip, and a part of me always used to think that B.D. was an inflexible jerk. So now, I wonder, what happens?

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

Merely quibbling, but in Get Fuzzy, it's Rob's cousin Will who lost the leg, not his brother.

A 9/11 sequence in Get Fuzzy showed that Rob's dad was a retired firefighter.

Non Sequitur, Sylvia, and a few other mostly non-political strips are starting to post pretty angry strips about how this war is being run; Bush is losing the comics page. I wonder if that means anything?