Doonesbury, a Political Cartoon Designed Like a Comic Strip: Pulitzer Prize Winner
More than only garnering fast national recognition, the strip started to be highly praised. Doonesbury won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning just four years after it first came out.
Originally an illustrator for the Yale Daily News, a school newspaper, Doonesbury started as the renamed version of the Comic Strip Trudeau developed while a student there. Bull Tales, that comic, was a sarcastic view of the life and times of a close-knit bunch of average college mates. The strip gained such much popularity among the school community over the two years of operation that Universal Press Syndicate, a newspaper publisher, noticed it and grabbed it up upon Trudeau's graduation.
Early success for Doonesbury connected to the biggest political scandal in America.
Although Doonesbury's emphasis was not entirely Political Commentary, Trudeau did –
and emphasizes it when the political environment calls for it, like during America's historic political crisis, Watergate.
Garry Trudeau came of age in one of the most politically active periods in modern American history; so, the turbulent social milieu he was raised in affected his perspective. Doonesbury evolved into a continuous statement of his ideas and emotions on his surroundings. Trudeau had no issues with putting these ideas on war, politics, and society in Doonesbury, and whether fans agreed or disagreed with different characters on various subjects, it was quite helpful to have them distilled into Comic Strip form.
Doonesbury Creates All The Great Editorial Cartooning Elements.
Comics were usually viewed as humorous and appropriate for all ages, hence Doonesbury's constant political emphasis—including even addressing actual politicians by name—went against accepted wisdom of the time.
Beginning with Nebraska's Lincoln Journal, one which was prohibited in more than a few newspapers, numerous other publications, moved Doonesbury from the humorous pages to the Op-Ed sections about about the same time the Doonesbury Watergate Scandal strip was published. Comics were usually viewed as humorous and appropriate for all ages, hence Doonesbury's constant political emphasis—even addressing actual politicians by name—went against accepted wisdom of the day.
The first ever Comic Strip to take home a Pulitzer Prize
Doonesbury needs to be acknowledged among America's most powerful comic strips even if it does not have the broad appeal of Peanuts or have become a worldwide hit like Garfield. Especially since Doonesbury was the first syndicated newspaper comic strip to win a Pulitzer Prize, this item of popular culture remains artistically and culturally significant to study even now.
Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury earned the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1975. Since the prize was originated in 1922, it was the first time a recurring comic strip received the honor instead of a one-shot, one-page cartoon.
The Ever Pulitzer Prize: First Ever
Given the weight of the cartoonists and cartoons routinely awarded the prize before Doonesbury – including anti-Vietnam war cartoons by Pat Oliphant – it was revolutionary for a comic strip often found on the funny pages to receive one of the most important prizes.
Jim Davis claims that Garfield's ageless relevance—which he meticulously maintained over the years—helps explain its widespread popularity.
