Mike Doonesbury
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Mike Doonesbury is the main character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury. He started out as a nerdish freshman from Tulsa at the fictional Walden College, and shared a dorm room with B.D.
In the early strips, his primary traits were his inability to hit it off with any girl, his refusal to admit his lack of success with women, and an attraction to lost causes (he often volunteered for political candidates who did not have the slightest chance of winning). He also talked to his own reflection in the mirror (and was frequently insulted by it).
After a couple of years on campus, he moved to Walden Commune, along with B.D., Zonker, Mark, Nicole, Boopsie, Didi, Bernie and Joanie. Eventually he graduated from Walden and married Joanie's daughter, J.J..
After dropping out of business school, Mike took a career in advertising in New York City at World Trade Center, and frequently found that the jobs he was assigned to violated his values and caused him a great deal of moral anguish over whether he should take the job or rebel. These assignments included selling Ronald Reagan to black voters and the creation of a new mascot for the tobacco industry. The latter caused him to have disturbing dreams, which came to life in the form of Mr. Butts, who occasionally haunts Mike's dreams to this day. Despite his qualms about his work, he usually accepted the tasks he was given, as he was too timid and too worried about finding another job to resist.
Mike's marriage was rocky from the beginning, and only got worse as time went on. He was down to earth and sensible, and J.J.'s "artistic" behavior became increasingly erratic. The two had trouble relating to each other, and he was almost tempted into an affair with Nicole. He relented at the last moment when J.J. revealed that she was pregnant. She gave birth to Alex Doonesbury in 1988. This temporarily saved their relationship, but they ended up divorced in 1996, after J.J. had an affair with Zeke Brenner.
After his stint as an ad-man, Mike found himself unemployed for an extended period of time, and became increasingly desperate. Eventually he landed a dream job working for Bernie's software company, moved from New York to Seattle, and met Kim Rosenthal, a brilliant and beautiful computer programmer who, despite being many years his junior, fell for him. They have been married for several years, and have started their own company, Mikim Inc. They now run MyVulture.com, an internet business that buys and sells overstock from other, failed, internet ventures.
Like many people, Mike knew someone who died in the World Trade Center attacks. His former boss, Mr. Bellows, was killed and Mike flew out to attend the funeral. He felt extremely guilty because he hadn't actually liked Bellows very much, and the feelings of guilt increased when Mike learned that Bellows had acted heroically during the attacks.
Mike started out with fairly liberal political views, but became more moderate-leaning-to-conservative over the years, as well as less naive and more cynical. However, he has grown to dislike the presidency of George W. Bush and his views have thus begun to swing more toward the left again.
Mike is the everyman of the strip. He is a fairly normal, well-adjusted person who is easy for most readers to relate to, in contrast to the often surreal, crazy and extreme characters that populate the strip. Trudeau based Mike's personality on his own and for this reason it is usually Mike who speaks the creator's own viewpoints. Mike's name was taken from the word "doone", meaning a person who is not afraid to appear foolish, and Charles Pillsbury, a classmate of Trudeau's at Yale.
[edit] Mike's Summer Daydreams
One of the strip's traditions is Mike's Annual Summer Daydream. Once a year starting in the 1990s, a week of strips during the summer is devoted to him fantasizing things as he feels things should be. These include having a son, running a highly successful business, getting called in to advise former president Bill Clinton, hearing George W. Bush admit his mistakes on television and resign, and seeing the Middle East in peace. The daydreams sometimes cross over into reality (at least partially) as when Mike dreamed that he had gotten a fantastic job from Bernie, only to have it suddenly come true (albeit at a somewhat lower salary than he had initially fantasized) without explanation. Another time he dreamed that he had won a free trip to Paris, where Kim was staying. The dream didn't wear off until he was already through customs, so he really made it there. On one occasion Kim even borrowed his fantasy so she could have one for herself and even George W. Bush too borrowed Mike's dream of having a crown on his head representing monarchy.
