Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 03, 2011

He has a brother??????

@Thirdguy, that’s what I was thinking!

Benjy is definitely a blast from the past.

check out

http://www.gocomics.com/features/search/benjy%20doonesbury

Is this about Garry’s family?

In the early days, Benjy was Mike’s little brother whose goal was to get into Harvard med school.

Daisy is Mike & Benjy’s mom???

I liked Mike’s Mom. She was a feisty old lady!

Yes, Daisy is Mike’s mom, and Benjy (Sal) is Mike’s little brother. I can’t recall another death in the Doonesbury universe… GT must have taken a cue from Lynn Johnston.

I wonder if the bikers will attend the funeral?

Lacy Davenport also died

I wonder why this comic was slow to get to this site. There were at least three other deaths in the Doonesbury Universe that I recall - Congresswoman (Senator?) Lacey, Mark’s father, and Andy (I think that was his name) in the ‘80’s.

We have lost yet another grand ol’ dame. She will be missed…

Trust me, at the reading of the will, Benjy will be there and wondering why he didn’t get it all. Division of the estate seems to have nothing to do with division of the labor in parent care.

At least GBT has enough sense not to do a reboot like Funky. That’s hard enough to figure out.

Or called every once in a while!!

I don’t think there is much to the Will.

What’s the old saying, ” money isn’t everything but it keeps the kids close.”??

There have been the occasional deaths, as well as the 3 mentioned by jnik23260; Dick Davenport (Lacey’s husband) also passed away, mid panel as it were, photographing a ‘Bachman’s Warbler’. The Andy mentioned was Andy Lipincott, an old friend of Joanie’s who died from AIDs related complications.

Read the previous comments, rickmac1937.

That’s Mike’s brother? I seem to recall another(?) brother who had the classic Mike nose that was quite a bit younger than Mike appearing during a sequence of strips when Mike was feeling old because the music he grew up with was now being played in elevators. The brother did little to help Mike out of his funk, disparaging Mike’s attempt to rock to, “Satisfaction,” by the Rolling Stones.

Ben “Benjy” Doonesbury at one point (back in the 80’s) held the “Dr. Whoopie” home-delivery condom franchise at Walden U. He was also a punk rocker for a while, and went by some sort of punk name, but I forget what it was. In some ways, he was an early model for Jeff Redfern.

(Just a couple of days ago I mentioned here that Ben hadn’t been seen in years; O my prophetic soul!)

jnik23260, Andy’s last name was Lippincott. He died of AIDS, and there’s an actual panel commemorating him in the AIDS Quilt.

Thank you, Fritzoid. I thought I also remembered something about the brother and some sort of mo-ped-delivery business concerning something medical as well but wasn’t sure.

Isn’t Mike rich enough to not worry about his mom’s estate?

Sal. That’s right. Thanks, Chikuku. As far as Benjy having been a sweet kid, you could say the same thing about Jeff. Puberty hits many of us pretty hard.

Don’t forget about Mark Slackmeyer’s dad. He always reminded me of Nemesys before he died … Slackmeyer, not Nemesys.

Andy died of AIDS. On his deathbed, he was making jokes about AIDS, and many newspapers cut a whole week of strips, saying it was disrespectful. People who had AIDS wrote in and said, they didn’t find it offensive or disrespectful. I found it very reassuring - GT has his finger on the nerve as usual.

To see the cartoons that had been censored, all you had to do was get a copy of your local free counter-culture paper. It had all the relevant strips.

I wonder whether these strips appeared in the book when the collection was printed?

Joanie Caucus met Andy when she was in law school, and she fell in love with him. Eventually she admitted this to him, because he didn’t seem to be responding to her overtures, and he said he was gay. To which she replied, “I’m often pretty cheerful myself!” or words to that effect - and then it dawned on her.

Weren’t there homosexuals by the 1980’s?

I know when I was growing up there were none. And no people in wheelchairs on the streets, nor pregnant women, nor people with disfiguring diseases.

Yes, this was the Dark Ages, but it was long after the dinosaurs!!

wow you never fail to shock me when you kill off people garym but you dailys are always enjoyable

hows it feel to know your a serial killer

doonsbury is censored at the yahoo site a couple of times a years

im so glad a read this one late in the evening , because now i wont have to wait but about a hour to get the next instalment

Lacy Davenport’s husband also died, while he was out birdwatching. He had asked her to go with him but she declined. He died at his camera.

Whoa. When did ma die??

This all hits close to home: my dad died last November & a couple of uncles have followed suit in the last month. Hope GBT is true to form & mines the black vein of all it’s worth. It helps.

Did I miss something? That’s pretty harsh, no warning and here we are around a coffin… Well, that’s how it happens sometimes, you have a strong and fit (ok, a bit old but…) parent and… in a swish, (s)he’s gone… Let’s love them while they are here and make the best out of it. So long Daisy.

When did Ben drop the “Sal”?

You rarely see people hug in Doonesbury. It’s always seemed liked they adhered to the same “No hugging, no learning” rule used on “Seinfeld.”