I’d Go with the Helmet, Ray

A Doonesbury Book

“Garry Trudeau is the premier American social and political satirist of his time.”–Newsweek

“He has transformed the comic strip into a venue of social commentary not seen since the nineteenth-century broadsides that gave rise to daily newspapering. It seems only fitting that something as modest as a comic strip could serve as the American equivalent to Tolstoy.”–Seattle Times

“Not since Thomas Nast has there been a more effective political and social cartoonist.”–Oakland Tribune

“The impact that Trudeau and his characters have had on the last twenty years really is incalculable. Trudeau’s characters have passed from merely comic-strip entities into something akin to cultural icons, mirroring society as they chronicle it.”–Idaho State Journal

In I’d Go with the Helmet, Ray, the intense situation in the Gulf reactivates a platoon of veteran characters. For B.D., the change of climate forces a change of helmets (“They cut it away like an avocado–strictly outpatient”), but in most respects, he’s clearly in his element. Mr. Butts, serving country and corporation as Battalion Tobacco Liaison, also seems right at home, but intrepid correspondent Roland “From-somewhere-in-the-Midwest” Hedley quickly becomes a whole lot more lost than usual.

Meanwhile, on the home front, USO volunteer Boopsie readies her turkey costume for the Jay Leno Southwest Asia Thanksgiving Tour, while conflicted adman Mike Doonesbury agonizes over an oil company TV campaign to “make the American people feel good about being gouged.” In contrast, Congresswoman Lacey Davenport keeps her integrity intact by resigning over the S and L crisis–a stately act of principle that leads her badly shaken colleagues to conclude she is suffering from a fatal disease.

This is Doonesbury at its best–provocative, witty, and poignant.

About the Author

G. B. Trudeau has been drawing his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip for more than forty years. In addition to cartooning, Trudeau has worked in theater, film, and television. He also has been a contributing columnist for the New York Times op-ed page and later an essayist for Time magazine. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jane Pauley. They have three grown children.
 

This website contains affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, you don’t pay a penny more, but we receive a small commission.