'Doonesbury' creator's hiatus extended

Garry Trudeau says he has hit an immovable wall.

Garry Trudeau checks faxes of his comic strip sent to his editor.

That’s the problem with remodeling. In trying to build his own Alpha House, Garry Trudeau says he has hit an immovable wall.

The Doonesbury cartoonist has been on sabbatical this summer as he readies his Washington-based TV series, Alpha House, one of the inaugural projects for Amazon Studios. That has meant a season of Doonesbury Flashbacks — a.k.a. reruns — on the comics page, with the comic strip’s return originally slated for Labor Day.

Now comes new word: Doonesbury fans will get 10 more weeks of darkness. Original strips are now scheduled to return on the week of Nov. 18. The weekly color strip returned Sunday.

Doonesbury, which appears in The Blade, in 1975 became the first comic strip to win a Pulitzer Prize (for its satirizing of Watergate). It went on sabbatical June 10. Trudeau decided he needed the break after his new live-action Capitol Hill comedy, Alpha House, was officially picked up by Amazon Studios, an enterprise of Amazon.com.

Alpha House is one of the first five series Amazon Studios greenlighted as it moves into the world of original scripted programming. The series, which stars John Goodman and Clark Johnson, centers on the lives of four Republican senators who share a residence.