The line snaked from the Briggs Opera House halfway
down Main Street. I was able to cut because I had
volunteered to work on the set up and clean up crew.
There were probably a few hundred people there at
least. It was a full house. After everybody finally
got seated a few local former VT politicians such as
Matt Dunn spoke about the Center for Cartoon Studies
and about how we were lucky to have such a talented
yet shy famous cartoonist pay us a visit. The former
Governor was there and she said a few words about how
we would all be lost without humor in this day and
age. She made some disparaging remarks about Mr. Bush
and said it felt good.
Finally Garry TD hopped onto the stage and went right
into his presentation. He joked about his generation
of baby-boomers innate ability to reinvent itself in
an effort to stay viable and important.
“When asked when the onset of middle age begins we say
at about 80.”
(Pause for comic relief)
Then he read us his future planned obituary as
a professional Basketball player for the New York
Knicks.
“No, I don’t think it’s that unrealistic. If you’ve
seen the Knicks lately…yeah. woah.”
The lecture was comedic and serious at times. Garry
showed us clips from his HBO and Cinemax shows
satirizing Reagan’s semi-botched bombing of Libya.
That particular parody depicted a group of dancing
singing bomber pilots amped up in a video arcade
playing After Burner between dance moves, and singing
in a sort of rhyming melodic military jargon.
We also were treated to new and old versions of the
animated Doonesbury. There was a huge difference
between the old cell animated high budget tv version
and the new web version. I actually liked the older
looking version better, but Garry was telling us about
the future in which cheap animation would change
comics on the web.
There were some other important bits like Garry telling
us how he got his start being plucked right out of a
college paper to do syndicated work for the big
papers.
“I was in the right place at the right time.”
He also told us about how when his strip got more
controversial the same old publishers who had once ran
his strip valuing his young voice and opinions,
dropped him. He told us about the anxiety of losing
those big clients and how it all worked out based on
the advice of his editor who told him in a cocktail
bar over the rim of a martini,
“Don’t worry. Just wait. They’ll die.”
It was a good plan.
Sure enough, the old publisher who dropped the strip
died a year later and the inheriting young publisher
made his first decision at the helm to buy Doonesbury
thus solidify it’s market worth, hipness, and
longevity to the other papers.
“It wasn’t my draughtmanship that they wanted so much as
what I had to say. This was a time of massive
generational divide. The papers needed fresh voices.
Younger voices from the generation that was tuning
out. At that point I was still awkwardly trying to
find my style on the page with each printing.
Fortunately, my audience stuck with me.
Garry told us about winning the Pulitzer and how over
night he was “fit company for dinner parties” and how
“that kind of scared me.”
He also told us about the gag coupons he had printed
in one strip with instructions to mail in to a corrupt
Washington politician who had questionable spending
and accountability habits. Of this he remarked,
“They tried to put the strip out of business…but
after the tenth bag of coupons arrived he gave up and
told the post office to stop delivering them.”
At the end of the lecture Trudeau answered questions
from the audience such as “Why did you leave the mouth
out of your early character’s faces?”
One woman who had approached the student comic
concessions stand before the show stood up at the end.
She was fighting back tears.
“My husband has been deployed to Iraq. Reading your
strip has helped me get through this time apart. I’ve
even started making my own comic. Thank you,” she
said.
Now it was Trudeau’s turn to fight back the wetness
from his bespectacled eyes.
“Thank you for saying that. And thank your husband for
me.”
The crowd stood at attention and thunderous applause
filled the opera house.
