Today’s Doonesbury is a metastrip, a cartoon about cartoons:
On the number of characters in Doonesbury:
Doonesbury has a large group of recurring characters, with 24 currently listed at the strip’s website. There, it notes that “readers new to Doonesbury sometimes experience a temporary bout of character shock,” as the sheer number of characters—and the historical connections among them—can be overwhelming. (link)
The main characters in this strip are two of the original cast: the ex-hippie Zonker Harris and the title character, Mike Doonesbury.
On the strip’s portmanteau name:
The name “Doonesbury” is a combination of the word doone (prep school slang for someone who is clueless, inattentive, or careless [not in the OED or slang dictionaries]) and the surname of Charles Pillsbury, Trudeau’s roommate at Yale University. (link)
