The White Plains, NY Journal News, a Gannett newspaper, runs Doonesbury seven days a week. The Sunday comics are included with the Saturday paper, which means that on Saturday, June 21, I opened the color comics section expecting to read the next day's Doonesbury, preferably with punchline still included.
I recommend that you head off to read the entire strip right now, then come back to here.
What I got instead of a punchline was this:
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| This panel is from the Doonesbury web site. | This panel is digitally altered to resemble the panel as it appeared in the Gannett Journal News of White Plains. | This is a photo of the actual printed panel. |
American Comics (who print the color section) and Gannett both claim that it was a "printer's error"--a smudge on the film. Certainly, such errors do occur. However, it's remarkable that the smudge completely obliterates the name and touches nothing else in the panel--not the comma preceding "Bill", not the line under the name, and no part of the balloon border. Just a little Bennett-seeking smudge. Imagine that!
You make the call.
Doonesbury is copyright by Garry Trudeau; this panel is copyright 2003.