4. Call Me When You Find America (Oct. 1973)

This collection reprints 124 daily strips from June 28 1972 to Dec. 29 1972
34 strips from the period are not included (see comment for list.)

Obviously, the key sequence from this book is Mike and Mark’s road trip and the introduction of Joanie, whom they meet in Denver. Henry Kissinger is shown as an on-camera player – Mark takes him to lunch at a Washington McDonald’s – for a five-day sequence. When the character returns as a lecturer later in the 1970s, he is an off-panel voice only, as is standard for celebrities in the strip.

At present, I have a 1976 Bantam edition of this book, which seems to replace the previous Popular Library reissue editions. Interestingly, this book is the first to correct Trudeau’s idiosyncratic “goodby” with the modern “goodbye.” The Doonesbury Flashbacks CD-ROM packaged with The Bundled Doonesbury book shows that the original strips were still using the old-fashioned spelling when they appeared in newspapers.