Well, about as current as one can be in a comic strip. This is the “Doonesbury” strip for today, Friday, May 21, referencing an event that occurred on Sunday, May 9, twelve days earlier. Back in my younger days when I had dreams of becoming a nationally syndicated cartoonist (i.e., the early-to-mid-1980s), the rule of thumb in every book about becoming a nationally syndicated cartoonist was that daily comic strips needed to be done 8 weeks in advance — or maybe you could push it as little
as 6 weeks — and Sunday strips needed a 10-to-12-week lead time. Obviously, that is no longer the case, thanks to technology. At least for daily strips. Sunday strips need more time, although I believe it’s gone down from 10 to 12 weeks to half that. And, thanks to technology, the Sunday strips look better on the page than they ever have before; the production and printing techniques are allowing, for example, gradients that are actually gradations, and reproduce correctly in perfect registration and don’t rub off on your hands. It’s just too bad they’re printed so small that no one can tell. Okay, my periodic rant about comic strips over. I hope we’ll have some exciting news about baseball-related program activities to share soon. (Exciting for me and probably Levi, at least.)