Garry Trudeau

Idealistic, controversial and sometimes a bit of a rabble-rouser: this could describe most of Garry Trudeau's characters in his iconic comic strip "Doonesbury" just as easily as it could the man himself. The Pulitzer Prize winning strip became an icon of its era and along the way spun off an animated television special, a Broadway musical and over 60 books, winning praise and censure in equal amounts.

Born Garretson Beekman Trudeau in New York City on July 21, 1948, he spent most of his youth upstate in Saranac Lake, NY. The village was the home of the Trudeau Institute, a biomedical research lab founded by his great-grandfather Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau. A child of the 1960s, Trudeau attended Yale intending to become a graphic designer. In 1968 in his junior year, he began a comic strip called "Bull Tales," a sports-centric strip that at first resembled most college newspaper strips.

The difference came about when Trudeau decided to widen the cast to three major characters: a right-wing frat boy and football star called B.D. (loosely based on the star quarterback of the Yale football squad, Brian Dowling), a fresh faced kid from Oklahoma named Mike Doonesbury and a progressive activist called Mark Slackmeyer. The strip took on a life of its own when Trudeau began to explore political themes in the strip as few other cartoonists had, by making them an everyday part of the characters' lives. He said in an interview with Rolling Stone that he saw his strips as dispatches from the front lines of the newly emerging generation of baby boomers.

By 1970, the renamed "Doonesbury" was syndicated to 28 newspapers. During the 1970s, the strip was frequently cancelled in various publications for frank and often controversial commentary on everything from drug use to the Watergate conspiracy. In May of 1975, "Doonesbury" became the first comic strip to ever be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. After being assured that the award was irrevocable, Trudeau supported the Editorial Cartoonists Society in condemning the committee for the award.

The 1980s saw many political storms reflected in the strip, from the controversial series "the Mysterious World of Regan's Brain" on the eve of the presidential election to episodes about the Polish uprising and Solidarity. Trudeau's marriage to television news anchor Jane Pauley in 1980 was a quiet affair, commensurate with the cartoonist's distaste for publicity. In 1982 Trudeau announced he would be taking a 20-month leave of absence after working on the strip every day since its launch in 1970. During his time off, Trudeau worked with Elizabeth Swados to write the Broadway musical comedy "Doonesbury."

It opened on November 21, 1983 and ran for 104 performances. He returned to the small screen in 1988 with the made-for-TV movie "Rap Master Ronnie: A Report Card," a biting satirical look at Ronald Reagan that was not well received. His partnership with legendary director Robert Altman on the mockumentary HBO television series "Tanner '88" was more successful. Altman was awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for the show. The pair reprised most of the characters in a second series in 2004 called "Tanner on Tanner." In the 1990s the strip turned its attention to the Gulf War for 250 consecutive days. This earned it a Certificate of Achievement from the 4th Battalion 67th Armored Division in Kuwait City and a Certificate of Appreciation from the U.S. Army. In 1996 Trudeau was awarded The Rueben from the National Cartoonists Society, the highest award from his peers that a newspaper cartoonist can receive. He had been nominated 16 times in the past 26 years. By this point many newspapers had moved the strip from the comics page to the editorial page as recognition of the role the strip played in the national political scene. A series of strips making readers aware of the labor conditions overseas at Nike factories was named by the Boston Globe as a major factor in the decision by Nike to raise the minimum working age in the plants to 16 and begin to address health and safety issues.

With newspaper comic pages shrinking in numbers on a regular basis, Trudeau viewed a move to internet publication as a necessary adjunct to the print strip. As part of the move, in October 2006, Trudeau began a military blog called "The Sandbox," a reflection of his growing involvement in creating a public place for America's soldiers to be recognized. One of the big catalysts for this involvement was when Trudeau made the decision in 2004 to have B.D. injured in battle, resulting in the character losing a leg. Trudeau's extensive research for this incident revealed conditions for returning soldiers that continued to inspire his work for the next decade.

Continuing Trudeau's tendency to embrace new media, in March 2009 he opened a Twitter account for Roland Hedley, the fatuous TV journalist character, that mocked both the character's own inanity and social media itself. In 2013, Trudeau took another sabbatical from the strip to co-create, along with political journalist Jonathan Alter, a sitcom called "Political Animals." A Beltway comedy based on a real-life house shared by a handful of senators and congressmen, the series starred John Goodman and was one of the first produced by Amazon Originals for online streaming and digital distribution.