The signs have finally gone up, and the construction barrels have been placed. The very real Roosevelt Bridge, that spans between DC and Arlington across the Potomac, is where our heroes, Foggy and Smithson live. It is also a bridge that I drive every day. The issue of maintaining infrastructure in the US is a serious one (recent bridge collapses in Baltimore and Pittsburgh are top of mind) and I, in fact, chose the Roosevelt bridge partly because it was crumbling…you know, for comedic value. Well, efforts in the Biden administration (remember “build back better”?) have now started to move forward. So, its a mixed blessing for GONOGO. On the one hand a dilapidated bridge adds to the world-building of the GONOGO multiverse, on the other hand, not having the bridge collapse is probably for the best in the real world. I suppose this is a problem that only a few other cartoonists have, that is, having the strip set in the real world. Bloom County was fictional, The Otterloops lived “just outside the beltway” and the Simpsons live in Springfield…I suppose that one of the inspirations for this comic, POGO, was set in the Okefenokee swamp, which is a real place….but it is also not in very much danger of having much infrastructure to speak of, let alone to maintain…
MK ULTRA EXTRAVAGANZA
Eagle eyed readers of GONOGO will be able to spot many references to earlier plot points featured this season in this weeks comic. Diving into the psychedelic horror that would exist in the minds of Foggy and Smithson, I wanted to highlight the paranoid and conspiracy theory driven world we are living in at the moment. I also added in a healthy dose of sixties era psychedelia art references because, lets face it, a little goes a long way, and the Federal Government is going to save money by using up the old stockpile. These last three episodes have been the most popular yet, which makes me wonder what that says about you, dear reader…Something in the Water

Last weeks comic highlights an aspect of DC life that is intimately known by the locals, DC water sucks. Don’t get me wrong, its a lot better than it used to be, but there is always something wrong with it. I used to live in Petworth (part of Northwest DC, East of Rock Creek) in a rowhouse built in 1912. We had a lead line that came into the house from the street, and we routinely had 280 parts per billion of lead in our water (the “safe” limit is around 20). Transgendered fish are common in the Potomac due to birth control pills. Snakeheads have taken over. A well meaning group of rowers took disadvantaged youth out on the Anacostia and, on their FIRST outing, bumped into a floating corpse. But what this weeks comic is alluding to is not these mundane aspects of urban water life, but a particularly DC issue, the secret government agencies that are doing lord-knows-what in our name, and are dumping the refuse of their experiments into the waterways willy-nilly. Have you noticed that nobody talks about fluoridation in the water anymore? Exactly…