Launched as a military blog (or "milblog") by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau in October 2006, The Sandbox is an online forum through which service members in Afghanistan and Iraq share their stories with readers here at home. In hundreds of fascinating and compelling posts, soldiers write passionately, eloquently, and movingly of their day-to-day lives, of their mission, and of the drama that unfolds daily around them.

A dog adopts a unit on patrol in Baghdad and guards its flank; a soldier chronicles an epic day of close-call encounters with IEDs; an Afghan translator talks earnestly with his American friend about love and theology; a dad far from home meditates on time and history in the desert night under ancient stars; a Chuck Norris action figure witnesses surreal moments of humor in the cramped cab of a Humvee --Doonesbury.com's The Sandbox: Dispatches from Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan presents a rich outpouring of stories, from the hilarious to the thrilling to the heartbreaking, and helps us understand what so many of our countrymen are going through and the sacrifices they are making on our behalf.

* I really feel like most people look at this war as little more than a television event. How many have ever taken the time to stop and think about what we go through every day over here? The bullets, rockets, and IEDs are not the hard part. The hard part is knowing that life goes on back at home. --FC1 (SW) Anthony McCloskey

* The man looks at me, his jaw working in anger. For a brief second, I get the impression that he is going to attack, and then suddenly, as if the energy has gone out of him, his shoulders slump slightly and he looks down at his brother's body. --1LT Adam Tiffen

* Out here in the desert, Time is King; the minutes are his minions and the months his sabers by which you are knighted. The King controls all that you do, when you come and go, and how long until you see your children. --Capt. Lee Kelley

Darrin Bell's Candorville is an insightful comic strip for today's world. Brutally honest but still evenhanded, Candorville takes on some of society's toughest issues, giving readers something to think about--as well as smirks, chuckles, and guffaws.

Another Stereotype Bites the Dust is a collection of creator Darrin Bell's Candorville cartoon strip. In this thought-provoking strip Bell uses a diverse group of friends to paint a real yet humorous portrait of inner-city America. An educated underachiever, Lemont Brown is an aspiring writer. Socially conscious, he wants to work at changing the world and infusing it with wisdom and justice--if only he could pay his rent. Lemont's childhood friend Susan Garcia is a book-smart and street savvy Mexican-American woman who won't let bigotry or any glass ceiling keep her down. And Lemont's friend Clyde (aka C-Dog) is a streetwise thug and undiscovered rapper who'd rather mooch off his mother than get a job.

Another Stereotype Bites the Dust deals with some tough issues--poverty, homelessness, racism, and personal responsibility--with knowing irony and incisive satire. Bell uses edgy dialogue and modern situations to jab everything from political correctness to political spinning, from political hindsight to office politics, making it a hit with the socially aware.

"Insightful and venomously cynical political cartoons . . . Rall straddles stereotypes, avoids party lines like live wires. . . . A true freethinker." --Las Vegas Mercury

There simply isn't a more polarizing, more controversial, or more widely read political and social cartoonist than Ted Rall.

Matt Groening: "Ted Rall makes me laugh out loud." 

Rush Limbaugh: "What is sad is that such an ignoramus ends up as a prominent cartoonist in major newspapers."

Janet Clayton, L.A. Times editorial page editor: "He's wonderfully incisive. He has a way of looking at the world that is rarely articulated in editorial cartoons."

Bernard Goldberg, author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America: "There is loathsome and there is beneath loathsome. And then there's Ted Rall."

Love him or hate him, Rall has a unique drawing style and makes caustic social commentary that sets him apart from the pack. America Gone Wild features Rall's most controversial cartoons assembled for the first time in a single collection. Rall views his strips as a vehicle for driving social change. He applies his outrageous sense of humor to volatile topics from 9/11 and the Iraq war to social issues such as unemployment, the environment, and religion. This collection comprises his edgiest material and features lengthy behind-the-scenes commentary from Rall.

This breathtaking volume boldly, cheerfully, and blankly stares back across the stunningly mellow life and times of Zonker Harris. From his Californian-American roots to his legendary status as surfer, nanny, and former sun god, his career trajectory has unfailingly carried him ever deeper into the homegrown heart of the American daydream. A puddle-plumbing denizen of Walden Commune, Harris spent his formative years as a bodaciously freaked-out college student. His innovative decoding of the rites and rituals of the burgeoning counterculture put him on the cover of Time. Forced by a strategic oversight to graduate from college, Harris blazed a path to glory on the pro tanning circuit. His triumph in the George Hamilton Cocoa-Butter Open set a high watermark for the sport.

Family values led Harris to devote considerable time to helping his stunned parents refill their empty nest. Extended-family values propelled him into a career as a professional nanny, in which capacity he has indeed taught the children well--especially Sam, who was surfing the long board while still in diapers. Later, leveraging his political cluelessness, Zonker served on the disastrous Duke2000 presidential campaign. A devoted foot soldier in the war against AIDS suffering, Zonk is held in high regard among SoCal's medical marijuana community for the efficacious potency of his magic brownies. Unfazed by worldly success, he remains a true and gentle freak. After all, he humbly notes, I am but one dude. 

Doonesbury continues to entertain, inspire, and provoke with its unique blend of social commentary, humor, and political satire.  Chronicling the millennial state of the nation through the interconnected lives of its large cast of characters, the strip offers unusual perspectives on the usual suspects, and asks impertinent questions on the pertinent subjects of the day. In Duke 2000: Whatever It Takes Trudeau's Pulitzer Prize-winning strip tracks the end of an Internet start-up and the beginning of a gay marriage, the revival of an aging rocker's career -- and the complete reinvention of the irrepressible Uncle Duke. In a presidential primary campaign attracting the likes of Warren Beatty and Donald Trump, perhaps it was not surprising that the former ambassador to China decided to throw his bandana into the ring.

Even challenging Dubya to a "pronunciation bee" can't save Uncle Duke's weird horse race for the White House. In the end, the former Ambassador passes out in a snow bank while the Cheney Administration kicks into high gear. Predictablistically, the new presidential syntax isn't the only thing that's tortured and strange. Take myvulture.com, an Internet company born and born-again, worth $1 million or $500, depending on whether you ask the CEO or his mother; or look at Joanie Caucus as the turnover in Washington casts her career into play, if not into midlife crisis; or consider J.J. and Zeke, whose pay-per-view, online wedding yields mucho buzz but zero bucks--just like the rest of the Net. Yes, it's a Dubya Dubya Dubya world. Doonesbury just downloads it.

The Boondocks is a rich, multilayered comic strip that offers a frank yet often funny look at race in America. It starts with a simple premise: Two young boys, Riley and Huey, move from inner-city Chicago to live with their grandfather in the suburbs. The tension increases, however, because the two boys are African-Americans now compelled to adapt to a white suburban world. They must take all they've learned in the "hood" and apply it to life in the 'burbs. Superbly illustrated, The Boondocks has stirred controversy, attracted widespread media coverage, and won readers who've applauded McGruder's unapologetic and humorous approach to race. In this second collection of Boondocks cartoons, readers can get another look at this innovative strip.

The Boondocks took the syndication world by storm. The notoriety landed Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder in publications ranging from Time magazine to People magazine which named him one of the "25 Most Intriguing People of '99." Centered around the experiences of two young African-American boys, Huey and Riley, who move from inner-city Chicago to the suburbs (or the "boondocks" to them), the strip fuses hip-hop sensibilities with Japanese anime-style drawings and a candid discussion of race. In this first collection of Boondocks cartoons, you'll discover the funny yet revealing combination of superb art and envelope-pushing content in one of the most unique strips ever.

When people read the strip over breakfast, we want them to laugh. If they're eating cereal, we want them to giggle so hard that milk will run out of their nose. If they're not eating cereal, the milk-nose thing may be tough to achieve, but we will remain optimistic."

Rudy Park and the other regulars and misfits who hang out at the House of Java coffeehouse form a modern nuclear family, drawn together by something much more powerful than blood-caffeine. Just as cavemen once hung out around a campfire, our regulars gather around the espresso machine discussing issues of the day, coping with modern life, and engaging in the occasional violent dispute over the bathroom key. The cafe also serves as a crossroads for current events and a watering hole for celebrities and politicians, such as J-Lo and Ben Affleck (contemplating a joint run for governor), Dick Cheney (doling out dating advice), and the gang from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (making sure everyone is dressed suitably for the comics page).

So sit down with a warm cup of joe and enjoy Peace, Love, and Lattes, the second collection of Rudy Park, which Newsweek has named as one of the top three contenders for new strip of the decade. Rudy Park offers social and cultural commentary that is both insightful and hilarious. With Rudy at the forefront, this technocentric strip lampoons the fast pace of our technology-driven world, our obsession with material possessions, and the folly of our cultural and political icons. Since bursting onto the comics page in 2001, the strip has grown in syndication to nearly 100 newspapers and Web sites, including the Seattle Times, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit Free Press, and Denver's Rocky Mountain News.

[Trudeau ranks as] one of the foremost sociopolitical satirists of recent decades." 

While some in the Doonesbury universe seek office, others serve. Alex and her Seattle co-hordes devote their young, restless, and body-pierced Deaniac energy to hooking up "flash art" with politics. Half a world away in Iraq, a major bad boy from stateside devotes himself to liberating the city of Al Amok, ruling with a steady hand, a full glass, a devoted Chinese handler, and an economy based on looting. As fate would have it, B.D. finds himself heading upriver on an apocalyptic mission to terminate Al Duke with extreme prejudice, a story line so made-for-TV that B.D. feels compelled to bang out the screenplay on his laptop in real time. Fortunately for the man known to Honey as "sir," the media red-lights the hit, though car bombers quickly pick up the option and put the project back in play.

In the homeland, a wartime president has the answer to almost all the questions ("9-11") but tries to shelve the still incomplete story of his own National Guard duty back in the daze. Mark and Zonk join the war against trash politics by offering a $10,000 reward for any witness who can collaborate the flightsuit-in-chief's account, but their efforts, alas, come to naught. Yes, it's a divided nation. On the west coast sexual assault charges accompany a rise to power, while back east they mandate a fall: Walden College's acting coach, Boopstein, lets accusations of way-personal fouls force her football team off the field. Sex parties for recruits? "Who knew we were that competitive?" marvels President King, ending Boopsie's gridiron apprenticeship with two little words: "You're fired."