Doonesbury Goes On Hiatus To Accommodate Alpha House Production Schedule

Award-winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau will take an extended hiatus of "a year or two" from his long-running strip Doonesbury to work on Alpha House, the TV project he has set up at Amazon Studios which was just renewed for a second season. "I've done the strip for 43 years — 45 if you include the college edition [at Yale] — and I'm ready for an extended break," Trudeau told Comic Riffs this morning, acknowledging, "A hiatus comes with uncertainty, of course: I can't assume I'll be welcomed back a year or two from now." Trudeau took a sabbatical from the strip last summer to launch the show, which was inspired by the true-life living arrangements of four prominent Congressional Democrats, but the timeline is much longer for this time around. "Comic strips and episodic TV actually draw from similar skill sets. I'm accustomed to writing dialogue, constructing scenes and developing characters. And, of course, I think visually," Trudeau said. "The main difference is that the strip allows me to be a little emperor, in total control of every element. On a TV show, by contrast, I have to get buy-in from 120 teammates. Alpha House is a small corporation, and when you consider all the disciplines, talents and temperaments involved, it's amazing that the show looks anything like what I imagined it would be. And yet, miraculously, it does."