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Comic strips satirize US pretensions during conflict

The events of the last six weeks have challenged creators of newspaper comic strips. Some have responded by simply avoiding references to terrorism and patriotic fervor. Others, like cartoonist Aaron McGruder, have tackled those topics head on.

On Oct. 4, for example, McGruder's strip, The Boondocks, depicted one of its main characters, Huey, calling the FBI terrorist tip line to report on people suspected of abetting extremists in Afghanistan.

"All right, let's see," Huey says into a telephone. "The first one is Reagan. That's R-E-A-G ..."

In the next day's strip, Huey tried to convince the FBI, pointing out that during the administration of Ronald Reagan the CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Afghan rebels to fight the Soviet Union. The strip then suggests that the current Bush administration has also given financial support to the Taliban government.

Newsday, on Long Island, NewYork, pulled the strip for a week. The Daily News in New York City pulled The Boondocks on Oct. 4 and published it only once since, assessing the strip on a day-to-day basis. The Dallas Morning News has moved the strip to a page away from the other comics.

But McGruder, the 27-year-old creator, writer and illustrator of The Boondocks, has not backed down. Last Wednesday, his strip satirized the newspapers that pulled his work.

The first panel carried a supposed editor's note, saying that "due to the inappropriate political content of this feature in recent weeks, it is being replaced by The Adventures of Flagee and Ribbon."

The end panel was an advertisement for flag-and-ribbon action figures for ``just US$19.95 plus US$4.95 shipping.''

Although many comic strips are avoiding even the slightest allusion to the attacks or the war in Afghanistan, a notable group of others, including Doonesbury and Millord Filmore, are sharing McGruder's impulse to comment on the news.

After Sept. 11, Garry B. Trudeau, who won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons with his strip Doonesbury, canceled a week's worth of Doonesbury that would have ridiculed President Bush's IQ. In their place, he began drawing strips that have addressed US fears of suspected terrorists and the pain of many friends and family members of victims of the World Trade Center attack.

Over several days, for instance, the character Mike Doonesbury, on a flight to New York, wrestles with the stereotypes of ethnic profiling after being seated next to a man in Muslim garb.

But no cartoonist has been more defiant than McGruder. Last week's parodying of patriotism drew complaints from dozens of the 250 newspapers across the country that carry The Boondocks through Universal Press Syndicate though none of the papers refused to publish the strip.

In an interview last week, McGruder, whose strip in the past has received acclaim, particularly for its examination of African-American issues, said his approach had not changed since Sept. 11: tackling issues that can make people uncomfortable.

"There was plenty to talk about without making light of the situation, and there was real opportunity to make legitimate criticisms of the government and media," he said.

"I struggled with it, and I really thought I was going to get canceled from The Daily News. But this is one of those critical moments in history, and I did not want to look back and regret not having said something.''

Executives at The Daily News said that they believed that the heavy political content of the strips the paper had held was not appropriate for the comics pages.

Stu Vincent, a Newsday spokesman, said his newspaper's editor, Anthony Marro, objected to the tone of two strips, but not the content.

Lee Salem, vice president and editor of Universal, defended The Boondocks.

He said that many great comic strips were criticized for some of their best work during turbulent times, including some of Trudeau's Doonesbury strips, which some newspapers occasionally pulled during the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal.

Salem surmised that New York region newspapers were particularly sensitive because of the impact of the attack.

"We have newspaper clients from Bangor, Maine, to Seattle, and we cannot always serve the editorial needs of such a diverse base of newspapers," Salem said.

"It's understandable that in this very diverse mix of readers and newspapers, it makes sense that some might object to a particular scene that does not fit their community."
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