Will Wolfslau
Staff Writer

What hasn’t been said about Garry Trudeau?

A lot, apparently. For being perhaps the single greatest printed cartoonist in recent memory, and the best political cartoonist… well, ever, the Yale grad is a mystery man. Fellow cartoonist and Non Sequitur writer Wiley Miller called him “far and away the most influential editorial cartoonist of the last 25 years.” He wasn’t lying.

This evening, Arts & Lectures is sponsoring an evening with Garry Trudeau at the Arlington Theatre. Finally, UCSB students have a chance to peer into the head of the man who has penned the Doonesbury strips that appear in the paper every morning since before we were born.
How does he feel about that Pulitzer Prize? Who’s the worse president – Reagan or Dubya? What made him decide to have B.D. lose a leg in the Iraq war? What made him decide to represent politicians as talking inanimate objects? Will Zonker ever get a clue?
Doonesbury has, in its time, become a living, feeling thing, an ironic parallel world documenting the rise and fall of our parents’ generation, its politics, ideals and lifestyles. And after some 30 years, it still has a marksman’s eye for hitting hot-button topics and overblown politicians in the most damaging (and hilarious) places. Trudeau has spent the better part of his life crafting and upholding this little world that has become a part of American consciousness, a mirror for our times. And this is a once in a lifetime chance to see the man not in reflections, but as his living, laughing self.
Arts & Lectures evening with Garry Trudeau begins tonight, October 26, at 8. Tickets are $22.50 for UCSB students.

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