News Release

Doonesbury Celebrates 35 Years of Syndication

KANSAS CITY, MO  (10/25/2005)  Former syndication salesman John McMeel still remembers what one editor said to him when he presented a fresh new comic strip from a Yale University student.

"He looked at me and said, 'What's a good Catholic boy like you doing peddling this kind of junk?,' remembers McMeel, now president of Andrews McMeel Universal and the 1970 co-founder of Universal Press Syndicate.

The strip was "Doonesbury" by Garry Trudeau. The editor's comment did not dissuade McMeel and his co-founder, the late Jim Andrews, from staking their reputations and their new company's future on what was to become the country's conscience on the comics page. For Universal Press Syndicate, "Doonesbury" became the first of many daring comics and features the company would bring to newspapers worldwide.

In the three decades since its introduction on Oct. 26, 1970, G.B. Trudeau's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip, "Doonesbury," has set a benchmark for social and political commentary. The strip, distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, started out in 28 newspapers nationwide and now appears in more than 1,500 daily and Sunday newspapers worldwide, as well as many online sites.

Over the 35 years, Trudeau has created 12,040 comic strips; and has written, some 602,000 words in those comic strips.

“I don’t tell this story by myself, of course. I do it in partnership with newspapers that provide me with a tiny piece of real estate every day from which to wave my hands and crack my jokes and try to move a general audience to thought and judgment about things that concern me,” the 57-year-old Trudeau told more than 200 editors recently at an editorial convention.

Trudeau’s work has been collected in nearly 60 hardcover, trade paperback and mass-market editions, which have cumulatively sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. Trudeau’s latest book, The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time, was published in June 2005, and chronicles the injury and recovery of B.D., a longtime Doonesbury character who lost a leg while serving in Iraq in April, 2004. The book was the subject of a New York Times Book Review cover story this year, a rare event for a comic collection.

Having spent time in the field visiting soldiers during the first Gulf War, Trudeau researched B.D.’s healing journey by visiting Walter Reed Medical Center and Fisher House in Washington, D.C. and several Vet Centers.

Since its inception, the strip has been provocative, and frequently praised or criticized. In reader surveys it regularly finishes in both the "most liked" and "most disliked" categories. More than any other comic strip, Doonesbury has served as a faithful chronicler of the fads and foibles of American culture, from the political to the personal.

In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Since then, he’s been a finalist three times, including this year for his strips concerning the war in Iraq. Trudeau has fearlessly weighed in on controversial subjects – Iraq, Vietnam, feminism, drugs, abortion, gay rights, AIDS -- and weathered many a firestorm of criticism.

"I know I routinely disappoint readers who mistake me for a journalist and believe I have an obligation be 'fair,'" says Trudeau. "But fairness isn't part of my job description. Satirists are in the business of having strong views. The upside is that usually those opinions are animated by hope. What drives much of our work is a robust, if insane, conviction that we as a society can do better."

To re-visit 35 years of Doonesbury, please visit the archives at http://www.doonesbury.com.

Universal Press Syndicate, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, also marks its 35th year in business this year and is the largest independent newspaper syndicate in the world. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, Universal Press distributes some of newspapers' most popular comics and features, including "Doonesbury," "Cathy," "Garfield," "FoxTrot," "Ziggy," "The Boondocks," "Baldo" and "The Mini Page." Its creator list ranges from Pulitzer Prize winners Roger Ebert, Pat Oliphant, Tom Toles and Anna Quindlen to famed columnists Abigail Van Buren ("Dear Abby"), James J. Kilpatrick, John Leo and William F. Buckley Jr. More company information can be found at www.amuniversal.com/ups.

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Creator(s): Garry Trudeau

Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

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