Doonesbury joins the 'IoS'

Wry scourge of hypocrisy, humbug and social injustice, the world's leading satirical cartoon is here

It is a Pulitzer prize-winning dissection of American life, a valued and lucrative voice for political dissent for 35 years.

The cartoon strip Doonesbury has chronicled, with warmth and humanity, every blemish of US policy at home and overseas, to the frequent fury of politicians and even the papers that publish it.

From today, this much-loved creation of writer Garry Trudeau joins The Independent on Sunday, allowing you to share in the highs and lows of Mike Doonesbury and his friends and offspring, as well as pillorying the figures who rule them. President Bush is portrayed as an asterisk in a battered Roman helmet.

Doonesbury was launched in more than 20 US papers in 1970, although a prototype had appeared two years earlier in the Yale Daily News. Reborn and renamed after its central character, the strip detailed the lives ofthe student community at the fictional Walden College.

Over the years Trudeau has been unafraid to confront big issues and break new ground. "I'm not into comics, I'm into satire," he has said. He introduced his first gay character, Andy Lippincott, in 1976; by 1990, Andy had died of Aids.

In 2004, Trudeau published two Doonesburys made up solely of the names of soldiers killed in Iraq, while last year, one of the chief characters, BD, lost a leg as a result of the Iraq invasion.

Doonesbury is now one of the most widely read cartoons in the world.From next week, it will appear in the News Review section of this paper. We hope you will enjoy it.

The key players

Mike Doonesbury: A liberal everyman, highly critical of Bush. Doonesbury is a former advertising man who now runs a software firm.

BD: Gung-ho, conservative foil to his laidback friends; for 30 years pictured in a helmet (American football, military, police). Lost a leg in Iraq.

Zonker Harris: Child-like ageing hippy surf-dude, turned male nanny.

Boopsie: BD's wife, ditzy failed actress, ex-body double/Playboy pin-up.