For some reason I haven't been getting my daily Doonesbury e-mail, so I took Mark Evanier's suggestion to begin reading with the Monday strip up through today. If you have ever been a fan of the strip (and I've been reading it for close to twenty years) you will probably be as shocked as I was by the final panel.

Gary Trudeau has dealt with AIDS, death and other very real concepts in his storylines and this appears to be right up there with some of his most hard-hitting. This is not a laugh-a-day plot, by any means. If you have any affection for his cast of characters you'll be as surprised as I was.