Uncle Duke
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Uncle Duke | |
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Publication information | |
Publisher | Universal Press Syndicate |
Created by | Garry Trudeau |
Uncle Duke is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau. He is nominally
Duke is an epic consumer of drugs and alcohol and an amoral trickster with a fondness for firearms. He has a son called Earl who resembles him in most ways but is sober and more intelligent.
Character biography
Duke's early life is murky. His mother is mentioned very few times in the strip; a flashback has her noting at Duke's college graduation that "one of three men I used to know would be very proud of you." He recalls having been born wearing
Despite Zonker calling him "Uncle Duke", Duke appears to be his surname, shared by his son Earl and his cousin David. The back matter for the Doonesbury collection "Death of a Party Animal" refers to him as "Raoul Duke," a throwback to the character's origins. Conversely, in one exposé of his past, he is revealed to have no last name.
In early strips, Duke and others would occasionally mention his wife, Sandy, and she makes a brief "appearance" (only her dialogue is shown, as is often the case in the comic strip) in several strips during a visit by Duke to their home in Colorado. Later, Duke forgets to bring her when he goes to his appointed posts in Samoa and China. When he finally returns home, his caretaker informs him that "She left years ago". They eventually divorced.
1970s
Since his first appearance in the strip, Duke has assumed many career hats, each more outlandish than the last. When first introduced, Duke was working as a writer under Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone magazine, much to Wenner's chagrin and aggravation over Duke's inability to meet deadlines and/or maintain coherence within the confines of his articles, which were often written with the aid of controlled substances. His Hunter S. Thompson comparisons are fairly evident in this beginning, as the first strip to feature him has him drunk and high on tequila and coke, attempting to kill invisible bats with a ruler.
While still on the staff of Rolling Stone, Duke applied for the position of Governor of American Samoa, and to his—and everyone else's—surprise, was actually appointed to the post by the United States Senate. Duke's tenure as governor was marked by a series of consecutive natural disasters, culminating in Duke himself instigating a hostage crisis.
Despite Duke's gross incompetence, he earned the favor of then-
Recalled by the newly elected
1980s
Shortly after his departure from the Redskins, Duke was hired as a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, owing to his borderline paraphilic love for firearms and gun violence. His role consisted chiefly of threatening members of Congress with write-in campaigns. He was next hired by oil executive Jim Andrews to parachute into Iran and bribe a government accountant for oil rights. The mission went disastrously wrong and Duke accidentally triggered the real-life Iran hostage crisis.
Upon his return to the US, Duke made a living for a while as a former hostage on the lecture circuit, then went on the run again after accidentally shooting his caretaker
Upon returning to the mainland, Duke became entangled in Hollywood politics, encountering "superagent" Sid Kibbitz. Kibbitz represented Duke in negotiations for a John DeLorean biopic project entitled Fast Lanes, White Lines. In order to secure funding for the film, Duke became a cocaine dealer and was shortly thereafter arrested after trying to deal drugs with men who turned out to be federal agents.
While the strip was on hiatus from January 1983 to October 1984, the characters lived on in a Broadway production entitled Doonesbury: A Musical Comedy. Duke was found guilty of drug-dealing, sentenced to five years' probation, and required by the court to open and manage a drug rehabilitation center for that period. At the end of the musical, Duke's efforts to seize the Walden Commune so it could be razed and the land used for the rehab center were thwarted, and Trudeau has stated in interviews and on the official website FAQ that both Duke and Honey were forced to flee the country afterwards.
Back in the strip, Duke opened the Baby Doc College of Offshore Medicine in Haiti, a grossly fraudulent medical school which was not above hosting a designer drug conference. One morning, Duke was discovered by Honey looking "more inert than usual" and pronounced dead, prompting the St. Petersburg Times to run a full obituary in real life.[citation needed] However, a few days after his funeral, it was discovered that Duke had been zombified, dug out and taken into slavery by the deposed tyrant Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who renamed him Légume ("vegetable"). After reporter Rick Redfern recognized him during an interview of Duvalier, Zonker Harris bought "Légume"'s freedom using most of a recently acquired lottery fortune. Duke remained hairless for several years following his zombie period.
Back on his feet, Duke founded the Dr. Whoopee
At the decade's end, Duke was tapped by President George H. W. Bush to serve as Maximum Proconsul in post-invasion Panama.
1990s
The first
After the
Duke also spent some time in the early nineties as a bodyguard for Oliver North. North was slow to trust him, but Duke soon became a key part of his security during his campaign for senator in Virginia. The public office bug soon became a key part of Duke's increasingly megalomaniacal psyche.
Duke also found work as a bounty hunter, apprehending Zeke Brenner for jumping bail with the assistance of Earl.
2000 and beyond
Duke ran for the White House after a short stretch as a key advisor to Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. His campaign, headquartered in a motel in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, was a resounding failure, despite corporate sponsorships by heavy hitters Lipton Tea and Absolut Vodka. (Through the magic of motion capture technology, Duke was able to announce his candidacy in the real world on Larry King Live.) A successful business trafficking in stem cells was followed by a lucrative involvement in the messy fallout from the Enron scandal.
In March 2005, following the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, the strip ran a tribute, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration". The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, who illustrated several of Thompson's works, including his 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
During the
Duke was then contacted by his son, now a successful
Hunter S. Thompson's reaction
Author and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, the obvious inspiration for Trudeau's Uncle Duke character (Thompson originally wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas under the pseudonym Raoul Duke; in a short sequence of Doonesbury strips, Uncle Duke desires to write a memoir about his shoplifting conviction, entitled, "Fear And Loathing at Macy's Menswear") said in numerous interviews that he was irritated and unhappy with the characterization. After being questioned about his reaction to the character during a 1977 lecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Thompson commented that "some people grow up and want to be firemen, and some want to be president; nobody wants to grow up and be a cartoon character". He repeatedly stated that his anonymity as a journalist and his privacy as a citizen were lost "largely due to our friend Trudeau," and said he had no desire to meet Trudeau "because I might set the little bastard on fire." The two men apparently never did meet face to face. Toward the end of his life, Thompson reportedly told friends he had "made peace" with the Duke character, and it no longer bothered him.[3]
References
- ^ Trudeau, Garry (Jul 8, 1974). "Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 08, 1974". GoComics. Retrieved Oct 4, 2019.
- ^ "Uncle Duke strip".
- ^ "Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67". CNN. February 21, 2005. Archived from the original on March 16, 2008. Retrieved Oct 4, 2019.