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…
Teddy’s Paradox
The whole point of this months GONOGO (with Teddy Roosevelt professing to love animals in order to shoot the bejesus out of them) is the contradiction (or paradox?) that someone would preserve wildlife in order to shoot it. I hope that it is not lost on my readers that this was the Republican stance over a hundred years ago. In a way, Teddy’s paradoxical view is light years away from where the current parties stand on these issues. It will be interesting to know how the Republican Party will react to the attempted assassination of Trump, however I doubt the answer for them will ever be “fewer guns”. It will not be lost on my readers that Teddy Roosevelt also survived an assassination attempt (and kept his speech rolling for a 50 minutes after being shot in the chest) which proves that GONOGO is once again “predicting the future”… It is my sincere hope that we, as Americans, can steer our parties away from the extremes and towards the center, even if it’s a paradox like Teddy’s.
A Bridge to History
I have often said that the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is a character in GONOGO. But this month’s episode takes it a step farther by unlocking the ghost of the former President himself. I am cautious about introducing new characters too often, because it can feel like there are too many people to keep track of, but I feel that this one is worth it. The comic would suffer if Foggy and Smithson only talked to each other. Having new characters is a way for them to communicate with the outside world and react to the profound weirdness that the DC area provides. In a way Teddy is personifying a feeling that any DMV resident carries with them subconsciously all the time; the weight of history in this place. All of the monuments, the civil war, the revolutionary war, civil rights, the world wars, Vietnam, 9/11 (the rest of America may forget that the Pentagon was hit that day, but folks around here find it hard to forget) even Jan 6 is part of the history around here. So, that is part of why Teddy has popped up in GONOGO, he’s a refection of the ever-present feeling of history that we have around here, and as a bonus I get the opportunity to make another republican look ridiculous (although they don’t seem to need my help doing that lately…)