"Rudy Park" is a quintessentially Silicon Valley kind of comic strip. Its creators have long-standing Bay Area roots. It's set — where else? — in a cafe, known as the House of Java. Through the years, its cast of characters have been caffeine-addicted, often tech-obsessed and, frequently left-of-center in their politics. When Donald Rumsfeld made a guest appearance in the strip a few years ago, dropping by for latte and conversation, one of the characters dropped dead from a heart attack.

"But we reincarnated him with the help of a George Foreman home genetic engineering kit," explains Darrin Bell, the former University of California-Berkeley (Class of '99) poli-sci major who draws "Rudy Park." The lampooning strip, from United Feature Syndicate, appears in about 80 newspapers around the country and makes its debut, for the second time, if you will, in today's Mercury News. (Secret Asian Man is being discontinued).

In case you don't remember, "Rudy Park" — it's written by Theron Heir, pen name for Matt Richtel, a New York Times business writer based in San Francisco — was once published in the Mercury News' old Sunday magazine, known as SV. That was well before the strip went into syndication, back in 2001. In fact, the Mercury News was the first newspaper to publish "Rudy Park," though it had appeared even earlier in high-tech magazines.

"The focus at the beginning was on the fact that the strip was set in a

cyber cafe," Bell says, "and the main character, Rudy Park, was a dot-com techie who got laid off and had to go to work as the cafe's manager. And so there were all kinds of tech jokes, and the cafe became a microcosm for the high-tech economy. That's why it was such an easy sell."

The focus of the strip has changed since the high-tech bubble burst — and since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The focus went from tech to politics," Bell says. "The point was to be relevant. So we decided to go political, to deal with the '9/12' mind set, the America-love-it-or-leave-it kind of thing."

Hence, the cafe's regulars — including Randy "the Rock" Taylor, a hulk-like ex-college football star; Sadie Cohen, a bristling octogenarian Luddite; and Rudy's Uncle Mort, the ultraliberal, reincarnated heart attack victim — got to know Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney (disguised as a woman), all drop-ins at the House of Java.

These days, the Democratic leadership, when it appears in the strip, huddles underneath a table in the corner.

"They've been there since the Bush administration. And, yeah, they're still afraid to come out," Bell says.

Of course, you never know who will show up at Rudy's cafe. "Britney," as in Spears, "has been by several times, too" Bell says.

Turn to page today's comics, and see who drops by for a latte.

Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069.