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Trudeau:
"Doonesbury" Doesn't Get Easier

Trudeau:
"Doonesbury" Doesn't Get Easier

Garry Trudeau says topics in his ''Doonesbury'' comic strip that were at first shocking to some readers aren't so anymore, such as one character's revelation 30 years ago that he was gay.

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Garry Trudeau says topics in his ''Doonesbury'' comic strip that were at first shocking to some readers aren't so anymore, such as one character's revelation 30 years ago that he was gay.

''Now I can pretty much write about gay issues and not hear from anyone,'' Trudeau told students at the Center for Cartoon Studies on Monday. ''Certainly, popular culture has a role to play in destigmatizing.''

The 59-year-old cartoonist talked about his work process and the challenges he's faced over his nearly 40-year career. ''I find it really hard,'' he said of his work. ''It's no less hard than when I started.''

Trudeau said his syndicated political satire, which has 30 ongoing characters, has been pulled from newspapers over the years because of its content and political themes.

But Trudeau doesn't see it as censorship. ''I've been careful not to call it that ... I call it editing.''

He said a newspaper in Maine ''got so freaked out'' about a strip that showed a man and woman in bed together in the '70s that they replaced it with the weather report. Another paper yanked the whole strip for a week. ''That always backfires for them,'' he said.

Trudeau, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, still draws the strip in pencil and sends it to a man who inks it and another assistant who adds color.

In recent years, with his children grown, Trudeau said he's had more time to do research. He's met with soldiers and created a military blog called ''The Sandbox'' on his Web site for their stories, collecting the best entries in a new book. Trudeau said he decided that ''the one thing the global war on terrorism doesn't have is its own literary magazine.''

In an effort to dramatize the seriousness of war, he had B.D., one of his main characters, lose a leg while fighting in Iraq. But just as shocking to readers was that the veteran character was missing his signature helmet.

''I heard over and over that that was what really hit people,'' Trudeau said. (AP)

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Trudeau:
"Doonesbury" Doesn't Get Easier

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