Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 02, 2012

A real hero meets an imaginary hero- this ought to be good!

Ah, this is going to be an entertaining week. I’m quite excited at the prospect of Toggle and Redfern meeting. Jeff should be able to boast of his exploits with a Predator drone and the time he shot down the USAF helicopter firing off a gun at a wedding.By the way, when did Toggle ever fight in Afghanistan? Wasn’t he injured in Iraq?

I’m thinking that she’s getting Iraq and Afghanistan confused – many people who haven’t been there do.

Orion

This should get interesting.

Just had a thought – Toggle may also have deployed to the ‘Stan before he hit Iraq and his IED. Wasn’t shown, but we don’t know his history before that deployment.

Orion

Jeff was in the CIA before he got sacked. Somehow I think Toggle’s BS detector is going to be going off real quick.

War porn….snerk….

If this doesn’t shake up Jeff, the real stories of a real brave soldier, then nothing will.

Meet-the-Family time. Leo, you are in trouble now…

War porn – love it.

Please, Alex, Jeff’s not THAT imaginative…

war is porn (especially since embedded journos)

>I’m thinking that she’s getting Iraq and Afghanistan confused

Isn’t that what Bush did post 9/11?

ne7 — I came in to ask the same thing.I don’t remember a “yes.”And I didn’t think Leo was old enough to have been deployed before his stint in Iraq…. but then, I also don’t remember ever hearing his age.

I didn’t think he had asked her yet. Good on him. Wait … is this a dream?

It could also be called terrotica.

Can’t believe Leo is really going to marry that psycho girl. Hopefully he’ll wise up before the wedding.

No way Toggle can dislodge Jeff from his grand life. However this plot line does bring Skye one step closer to Jeff, and Skye could make a mark.

Double date?

I can’t wait for this interchange.

When did they get engaged? Last I remember she texted him from a snow storm and he wanted to talk to her.

This is my first exposure to these characters; what caught my mind, was " war porn"? Curiosity will bring me back to this series.

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the relations, notably “half uncle”?

Leo probably did a tour in Afghanistan before doing one in Iraq. Many servicemen and women have served in both fronts.

@Kathryn G.

You’re right to notice Alex’s remarkable phrase “war porn.” Trudeau (GBT) is bringing together two romantic story lines that have until now have strictly alternated.

Doonesbury is political satire. When GBT strays into romance, he never offers soap opera (what comic writer does?). His young lovers are constantly interacting with a more cynical, older set of characters—-here, Joanie, who is mother both to Alex’s mother (by her first marriage) and to Jeff (by her second husband, Rick Redfern).

Until now, GBT has segregated the two romance-lines. In one of them, we’re to imagine—-since GBT has to spare us the soap opera—-that Alex and Leo (Toggle) have exchanged vows. Alex has at last brought Leo to meet Grams (their first date with Joanie was broken off by the political reality of OWS).

The alternative romance involves just one young lover, Jeff, who’s in love with himself—-and with the houris that populate his fantasy seraglios or his fantasy publishing world (e.g. Becca Bickle).

As commentators have remarked above, the clash between Leo and Jeff over the reality of war could utterly extinguish Jeff’s character.

Or GBT could introduce Jeff’s pornographic fantasy Becca to Leo, all but annihilating Alex’s romance. I somehow doubt GBT will attempt that in this strip. That would turn Gram’s house into a Doonesbury family reunion with the entire cast interacting. Simpler for GBT to refer readers to his collections.

WAIT!!! ALEX DOESN’T HAVE A RING!!! I know GBT doesn’t miss those details, so what’s the backstory?

Tom Clancy . . . war porn? Discuss . . .

@ Joanie’s announcement in the last panel

New readers of this strip need to know that Joanie is telling us that her narcissistic son has returned from his fantasies. In the latest, a few weeks ago, Jeff used his imaginary profits from his Red Rascal memoirs to buy an imaginary mansion.

Alex, thanks partly to Leo, is less a prisoner of her narcissistic fantasies. Her (GBT-) inspired description of Jeff’s writing as “war porn” (see Fritzoid’s expansion, above) sets up a potentially dramatic encounter between her uncle the glib fantasist and her stuttering fiance who has no use for pornography—-military or not.

I thought the word for “war porn” was “warnography.”

Have Alex and Jeff ever been in a scene together? It seems strange that they’ve never met.

But wasn’t Toggle fighting Sadaam’s forces? And everybody knows Sadaam was a member of al-Quaeda which is synonymous with Taliban. Hence Toggle fought the Taliban, QED.

What do you mean, “confused?”

Somebody better warn Zonk, the feds are raiding Oaksterdam University with chainsaws and sledgehammers, right now! The heads outside are not happy.

Notice how GBT makes Joanie look almost queenly, giving her an attractive dress and letting her stand on the porch one step higher than her guests from the younger generation. Her house represents whatever political reality may survive from the last quarter of the 20th century.

I wonder if her home (and Rick’s) is going to be Leo’s rather than Jeff’s. In any case, Trudeau is setting up a trial between two very different exponents of lifestyles for the future.

How about this. Leo tells his story to Jeff and Jeff ghost writes a book about it and they both make a bundle!

Leo/Toggle vs Jeff/The Red Rascal — this IS going to be good. Leo is probably my favorite “new” character (out of the ones which have existed for several years). He’s quiet and unassuming but you know he’s brave and has a good heart. I’m waiting for Jeff to start his B.S. and have Leo shoot him down.

The Taliban crosses borders.

I know I’m late to the party but Alex and Jeff have met before. When Alex was visiting colleges, she spent a weekend at Walden – which was her safety school – and stayed with Jeff and Zipper. Who were thinking about hitting on her, if I remember correctly, because Jeff hadn’t really spent time with her before that.

So, Is this the first doonesbury comic strip that officially reveals that Alex and Toggle are officially ENGAGED?! How come everybody isn’t talking more about that?!