In Welcome to the Nerd Farm!: A Doonesbury Book life comes full circle as another Doonesbury Gen Nexer heads for college. With Zipper way-too-deeply embedded at Walden (America's number-one safety school) Alex boldly opts for MIT, the nerdfarm, where 30-hour study binges are de rigueur. Daily 911 calls home and a sense of doom (Just get some duct tape, roll me up in my bedspread, and ship me home . . .) give way as Gal Doonesbury finds fellowship among the similarly exhausted: No nerd left behind, explains roomie Drew, as they co-brainstorm their way through finals. The indomitable Granny D struggles with a life change as well; the move from sunny Oklahoma to live with Mike and Kim in saturated, caffeinated Seattle leaves her distinctly unbuzzed. Then there's the on-air unraveling of Mark and Chase's marriage (I'm tired of living with a Nazi!), with Joanie handling the technicalities of dissolving a legally nonexistent union. Equally traumatic is Uncle Duke's change of status, emerging from a months-long stupor to find himself pulling down six figures as a K Street lobbyist-and reregistering as a Democrat. Also shifting kin groups is B.D., who reluctantly joins PTSD group therapy, where Dex, Kurt, and Jason call him on much-needed 'tude adjustments. But there are signs of improvement: I didn't explode! he exults, after finding Zipper living in his office. That homeless yet ebulliently overoptimistic undergrad is deeply smitten with Alex, but is dangerously far ahead of her--picking out their future tabloid nickname before she even knows they're an item. Understandably, her considerable attention is focused elsewhere--on surviving MIT's killer grind and on the Battle of the Bots, a high-tech smackdown where she unleashes Alfie, an impudent, high-end hoverbot. Bring it, techgirl.

No rogue regime ever needed its evildoing professionally reframed more urgently than Greater Berzerkistan, whose president-for-life Trff Bmzklfrpz (pronounced "Ptklm") needs to spin a recent round of ethnic cleansing. Fortunately, the pariah state (and its 50-hole golf course, built overnight by Kurds and Jews) borders Iran, a fact that K Street uberlobbyist Duke is retained to parlay into a major U.S. arms package. Meanwhile, across town, the crumbling of the newspaper industry crushes Rick Redfern's hope of continuing employment. After 35 years at the Washington Post, he is ejected into the blogosphere, where his prose now battles it out with that of 1,186,783,465 rivals, including Roland Hedley, who takes the art of Twittering to a new self-reverential low. Truly, everyone in Doonesburyland is struggling to adapt. While white Washington insiders scramble to acquire some African American friends, longtime black conservative Clyde schemes to score Obama's Blackberry number, Clinton-era Dems are forced to attend the president-elect's "No Drama School," and Jimmy Thudpucker once again reboots his career--this time as a cell phone ring-tone artist. No one ever said change was pretty.

“In a class by itself.” —Jules Feiffer on Doonesbury This all-color volume celebrates the marriage of Alex and Toggle, an event which optimistically confirms that life, like Doonesbury, rolls on. Indeed, how remarkable that the strip has so embraced and occupied its era that three generations of one family have married within its panels. Gathering their kith and kin around them at Walden, the wise but wounded soldier-artist and the brilliant but insecure techhead make a promising team for the years ahead, well-rounded yet squared away. Doonesbury’s fifth decade finds the largest rep company in the history of comic strips fully and widely engaged. Like so many flesh-and-blood fellow citizens, key characters now struggle with dramatic career change and job stress. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to reverberate through the lives of others, as the strip illuminates their experiences with an attentiveness unparalleled in popular culture. Amid the relentless unfolding of unexpected storylines, the strip’s second and third generation characters increasingly take center stage, and the youngest regular, Sam, comes of age—literally in the blink of an eye—as the newlyweds prepare to welcome twins. It never ends, and how lucky for readers. “Most comic strips run out of creative energy after their initial inspiration,” notes Garry Wills. “Trudeau has just kept improving, year after year.”

An Iraq War vet struggles with a traumatic brain injury in this Doonesbury book that examines the impact of combat of American soldiers. Headbanging Humvee driver SFC Leo Deluca (a.k.a. Toggle) had a love of ear-bleed battle music—until the sonic distraction led to his vehicle getting blown up in Iraq. Missing an eye and suffering from aphasia, Toggle fights to recover from traumatic brain injury (TBI), a journey of recovery that brings out the best in his former commander, B.D. Toggle's tattooed, metalhead mom initially has reservations about his improbable Facebook romance with an MIT tech-head named Alex, but love blooms. As the story unfolds, Toggle finds himself drawn toward a career in the recording industry, undaunted by the limitations of the New Normal that now defines his life. Crafted with the same kind of insight, humor, and respect that earned Trudeau a Pulitzer prize, Signature Wound is a perceptive and timely look at the contemporary soldier's experience.

Readers and critics were wowed by G. B. Trudeau's epic masterpiece 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, and they'll rejoice when they see this beautiful follow-up volume. Featuring an innovative format and an all-new collection of strips, Red Rascal's War is the first all-color Doonesbury book ever. Both Trudeau and his fans have followed Doonesbury's ever-expanding cast through four decades of cultural turbulence and change. With its arresting cover and rich interior, Red Rascal's War showcases the most recent additions to a body of work the New York Times admiringly refers to as "a sprawling masterwork." "[Trudeau is] Dickensian in his range of characters," writes Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books. "Trudeau has just kept improving, year after year, in part because he stays so close to changing events. . . . He has never been better than in the last six years." From the exploits of Afghan legend-in-chief Sorkh Razil to the pipe dreams of Malibu's top nanny Zonker Harris, and from the "no more chill pills" intervention by Obama's aides to the way-cool love of a headbanging war vet and his MIT-grad gal, Doonesbury marches wildly on. "What else is guaranteed to make you think, feel nostalgic, and laugh out loud at least once a page?" --Karen Holt, O Magazine

The continuation of Pulitizer Prize-winning cartoonist G.B. Trudeau's bestselling Trump series, this fourth (and final?) volume chronicles Doonesbury in the time of Trumpism. Though the title doesn't mention him by name, Former Guy looms large in American politics and culture even after leaving the Executive Office of the President. This latest Doonesbury collection picks up in the heat of the 2020 presidential campaign, chronicles the infamy of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and continues into the next administration, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and the many manifestations of Trumpism in global politics and American life. Over 50 years into his legendary career, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist G.B. Trudeau is still the most accomplished satirist in comics, and his ongoing comics coverage of Donald Trump are unparalleled in breadth and humor.

“I don’t read Doonesbury. He glorifies drugs.” —Former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater Welcome to the age of pivots. Two centuries after the Founding Fathers signed off on happiness, Zonker Harris and nephew Zipper pull up stakes and head west in hot pursuit. The dream? Setting up a major grow facility outside Boulder, Colorado, and becoming bajillionaire producers of “artisanal” marijuana. For Zonk, it’s the crowning reset of a career that’s ranged from babysitting to waiting tables. For Walden-grad Zip, it’s a way to confront $600,000 in student loans. Elsewhere in Free Agent America, newlyweds Alex and Toggle are struggling. Twins Eli and Danny show up during their mother’s MIT graduation, but a bad economy dries up lab grants, compelling the newly minted PhD to seek employment as a barista. Meanwhile, eternally blocked writer Jeff Redfern struggles to keep the Red Rascal legend-in-his-own-mind franchise alive, while aging music icon Jimmy T. endures by adapting to his industry’s new normal: “I can make music on my schedule and release it directly to the fans.” He’s living in his car. G.B. Trudeau’s Doonesbury is now in its fifth decade, and has chronicled American life through eight presidents, four generational cohorts, and innumerable paradigm shifts. His political sitcom Alpha House, starring John Goodman, is available on DVD and by streaming from Amazon Prime. For the record, Trudeau always inhaled back in the day. As President Obama once explained, “That was the point.”