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Doonesbury Annuals #15
Doonesbury: But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There
Uncle Duke bounces back from diplomatic recall to the Washinton Redskins' front office, Phred--the former Vietcong terrorist--arrives as envoy to the United Nations, and--at WBBY-Marvelous Mark directs a write-in campaign against Koreagate
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1979
About the author
G.B. Trudeau
160 books129 followersGarretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip. In 1970, Trudeau's creation of Doonesbury was syndicated by the newly formed Universal Press Syndicate. Today Doonesbury is syndicated to almost 1,400 newspapers worldwide and is accessible online in association with Slate Magazine at doonesbury.com. In 1975, he became the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer, traditionally awarded to editorial-page cartoonists. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 1990. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 in the category of Animated Short Film, for A Doonesbury Special, in collaboration with John Hubley and Faith Hubley. A Doonesbury Special eventually won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Special Prize in 1978. Other awards include the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 1994, and the Reuben Award in 1995. He was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. Wiley Miller, fellow comic-strip artist responsible for Non Sequitur, called Trudeau "far and away the most influential editorial cartoonist in the last 25 years." In addition to his work on Doonesbury, Trudeau has teamed with Elizabeth Swados and written plays, such as Rap Master Ronnie and Doonesbury: A Musical Comedy. In 1988, Trudeau joined forces with director Robert Altman for the HBO miniseries Tanner '88 and the Sundance Channel miniseries sequel Tanner on Tanner in 2004. In 1996, Newsweek and The Washington Post speculated that Trudeau wrote the novel Primary Colors, which was later revealed to have been written by Joe Klein. Trudeau wrote the political sitcom Alpha House, starring John Goodman and Bill Murray. The pilot was produced by Amazon Studios and aired in early 2013. Due to positive response Amazon has picked up Alpha House to develop into a full series.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 24, 2012
Contains the marvelous segment explaining the principles of Californian English. If you don't know it:
- "See Rick, in its way, mellow-speak is a remarkably economical dialect. What Dr. Asher has done is reduce language to only its most essential components. Here, I'll show you. Give me a line to translate."
- "How about this... 'The moon like a flower in heaven's high bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night."
- "William Blake, right? Okay, let's see... In mellow-speak, that would be... 'Oh, wow, look at the moon.'"
- "Duane, we've got to talk"
January 14, 2009
The difference in writing style, subject matter, framing of 'shots', etc etc etc, between this (1979) and The President Is a Lot Smarter than You Think, which was I think 1975, is mind-blowing. This will sound overly dramatic, but I think we are so lucky that Trudeau was given the room and the ability to grow and grow with his strips, that they were allowed to become the magic that they did. I mean, when he started out, how did people know from those amateur, self-indulgent, semi-cliché strips about 'hippie longhairs' and college kids arguing with their parents that Trudeau was going to become one of the most original and brilliant comic strip writers ever? (There's probably something to be said here about the way the comic strip industry works, then, but I don't know enough about it to start making those claims...)
May 14, 2025
Garry Trudeau’s But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There is another razor-sharp entry in the Doonesbury canon, skewering the absurdities of late-1970s American life with wit, heart, and uncanny precision. The collection brims with bold satire, none more memorable than Uncle Duke’s stint as the utterly unqualified manager of the Washington Redskins. His introduction of “Lava Lava” Lenny—a player seemingly summoned from another dimension of chaos—encapsulates the book’s brilliance: outrageous, yet eerily plausible.
Elsewhere, Trudeau deftly captures the political disillusionment of the era through the lens of protest. The student-led backlash against Henry Kissinger’s dinner appearance, honoring the Shah of Iran’s wife, crackles with generational anger and Trudeau’s signature dry humor. The tension between public spectacle and political conscience is laid bare—never preachy, but always biting. Phred’s transformation from Viet Cong guerrilla to Vietnam’s unlikely UN Ambassador adds another layer of global absurdity, as he stumbles into diplomacy with a mix of sincerity and deadpan charm.
The book also tackles real-world scandal with Mark Slackmeyer’s interview of Congresswoman Lacey Davenport during the Koreagate hearings—a segment that manages to be informative, funny, and unsettling all at once. Trudeau’s genius lies in how he weaves real politics into his characters’ lives, letting the satire speak for itself. But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There remains a high point in the series, offering both nostalgia and timeless commentary for any reader who appreciates sharp-eyed humor with a pulse on the political soul.
Elsewhere, Trudeau deftly captures the political disillusionment of the era through the lens of protest. The student-led backlash against Henry Kissinger’s dinner appearance, honoring the Shah of Iran’s wife, crackles with generational anger and Trudeau’s signature dry humor. The tension between public spectacle and political conscience is laid bare—never preachy, but always biting. Phred’s transformation from Viet Cong guerrilla to Vietnam’s unlikely UN Ambassador adds another layer of global absurdity, as he stumbles into diplomacy with a mix of sincerity and deadpan charm.
The book also tackles real-world scandal with Mark Slackmeyer’s interview of Congresswoman Lacey Davenport during the Koreagate hearings—a segment that manages to be informative, funny, and unsettling all at once. Trudeau’s genius lies in how he weaves real politics into his characters’ lives, letting the satire speak for itself. But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There remains a high point in the series, offering both nostalgia and timeless commentary for any reader who appreciates sharp-eyed humor with a pulse on the political soul.
May 20, 2021
Peerless Pandemic Distraction Reading.
November 11, 2024
After the last one, I really shouldn't have expected these to start making any more sense than usual. The problem with Doonesbury is it's mostly topical, so if I'm not keenly familiar with events of the Carter administration (which... I'm not), then most of the jokes will go over my head.
And they do.
I can mostly follow the plotlines like Duke being a caricature of Hunter S. Thompson (though I only just now understood it was caricature, vs. just Duke being his own terrible self) and talking his way into managing the now Washington Commanders, and Mark's radio show, but the specifics of the U.N. meetings, for instance, I can only guess at, since I'm not intimately familiar with the majority of the nations represented at the meetings (or that Benin changed names so recently that their Doonesbury representative didn't even know about it at first).
Like, I could do the homework to get a delayed laugh, for certain, but that feels like more work than I feel like putting into it. So while I do appreciate Trudeau's work—especially the fact he does things like redraw EVERY PANEL that most people especially now would just cut-and-paste—I'm afraid that I won't get a lot of it without a history book (or website) at hand.
Probably why I could get EIGHT of these volumes for $1/each at the store, that the jokes are so dated that nobody gets them anymore. Unfortunate, but I can't really complain about that so much when I wouldn't criticise a newspaper for having similarly dated content. I mean, SOME of it is still relevant, thankfully. It's just a matter of picking through to find what's still funny even all these years later.
And they do.
I can mostly follow the plotlines like Duke being a caricature of Hunter S. Thompson (though I only just now understood it was caricature, vs. just Duke being his own terrible self) and talking his way into managing the now Washington Commanders, and Mark's radio show, but the specifics of the U.N. meetings, for instance, I can only guess at, since I'm not intimately familiar with the majority of the nations represented at the meetings (or that Benin changed names so recently that their Doonesbury representative didn't even know about it at first).
Like, I could do the homework to get a delayed laugh, for certain, but that feels like more work than I feel like putting into it. So while I do appreciate Trudeau's work—especially the fact he does things like redraw EVERY PANEL that most people especially now would just cut-and-paste—I'm afraid that I won't get a lot of it without a history book (or website) at hand.
Probably why I could get EIGHT of these volumes for $1/each at the store, that the jokes are so dated that nobody gets them anymore. Unfortunate, but I can't really complain about that so much when I wouldn't criticise a newspaper for having similarly dated content. I mean, SOME of it is still relevant, thankfully. It's just a matter of picking through to find what's still funny even all these years later.
July 1, 2023
Coming out in 1979 and covering the first half of 78 – lots of politics here but it’s not just politics – Duke becomes general manager for the Washington Redskins and brings his particular brand of clean play to football, as if it needed that.
May 20, 2025
Re-reading these Doonesbury collections is turning a flashlight on the past, even if you don't follow football. Duke is a glimpse into a drug culture that can never again be looked on as harmless. And why DID Shirley Maclean attend the banquet honoring the Shabanou of Iran?
April 23, 2019
Always entertaining.
Read
November 2, 2019On the 5th tour through the entire Doonescape. It never fails.
March 10, 2020
Featured a protest when the Shah of Iran visited! Never saw those masks before!
September 4, 2013
The mid-Carter years weren't the high point of anyone's version of American history, but Trudeau did a good job holding the crew together through the Korean ethics scandal in the house (viewed via Lacy Davenport, who charmingly forgets about her primary), the beginning of the end of the Shah's rule in Iran, the continuing descent of television "standards" (which hadn't begun the slide from the pinacle). One of my favorite Uncle Duke sequences kicks the book off and former Viet Cong Phred, now ambassador to the United Nations, provides a decent enough backbone for a decent enough collection.
May 31, 2007
Uhh yeah, as a 6 year old, I read this book over and over. Did I understand it? no, not a word.
June 16, 2019
Kissinger and the Shah in this one. Raoul Duke. Shirley Maclain. Exxon Oil. Carter as President.
Alexander Haig. Tip O'Neill.
Alexander Haig. Tip O'Neill.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews