Doonesbury has been running story lines with the twenty something children of Mike Doonesbury and the other original characters who have inhabited his world almost from the start.
I can appreciate Trudeau wants to keep the strip fresh and wants to ensure that his readership expands into the younger generation with characters they can identify with.
And I would be the last to deny that the recent story lines-Mike's daughters romantic adventures for example, are as always wittingly, nay uniquely wittingly drawn (artistically and verbally) but Trudeau is in danger, I think, and for what it is worth, of losing his original fans.
Of course his original fans will be lost in the not too distant future because they will be popping off. And, sad to say, Trudeau himself will eventually go to the great cartoonist in the sky home.
That being the inevitable case I think GT should stick to the knitting and go back to the storylines for his original characters-let them face the things that Boomers are-losing equity in their homes, possibly getting prostate and breast cancer, and, dare I say it, the end of their naiveté and love affair with the liberal left, especially as epitomized in President Obama.
What GT is doing is what the Blondie team did.They always had a"nephew" in each era who looked whatever the current look was-hippie,70's moustache etc to keep the kids interested.However, we Boomers are wise to that trick and it just won't do for us-Mike/Zonker and co. till we die!
To be more realistic in any return to where his loyal fans live in the real world, perhaps GT could, instead of attacking Sarah Palin as he regularly does of a Sunday strip, he might, to reflect reality, and portray her in the positive light of the, trending conservatives as they age, boomers-like, well, like myself.
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