‘Banana Republic’ book takes comic look at our tortured era

For two years of the Bush era beginning with Hurricane Katrina, the Star Tribune published a weekly comic strip on its opinion page that was unlike anything else in American newspapers, sending up current events in a serial format with heaping helpings of dark humor and giddy gore.

Kirk Anderson’s “Banana Republic” dispensed satire so bruising and brutal it made you want to die of shame — but also so funny and true it gave you reason to live. Now a new book compiles every episode of “Banana Republic,” letting readers relive tortuous times and die of embarrassment all over again.

Click the arrow to play the promo, exclusively on MnIndy.

The detestable action in “Banana Republic” is set in the nation of Amnesia, located somewhere south of the border. Yet every week events quite like those in Amnesia had just happened at home in the United States. Waterboarding, wiretapping, welfare for the wealthy – all took on a fake Spanish accent that fooled you only long enough for a laugh to get caught in your throat like a bad breakfast burrito.

Anderson peopled Amnesia with dictator Generalissimo Wally and his loyal subjects – cheering masses that do not include Rita, a frustrated member of the impotent opposition party called Los Cause, or her husband Diego, who spends much of the serial suffering casual torture as a prisoner of Wally’s regime. They are joined by Rita’s brother Cesar, who upon return from National Guard duty in a foreign war is rendered useless for civilian life when army doctors replace his arms with twin bazookas.

The exotic setting is strategic, letting readers react to the atrocities and bad policies depicted before they recognize the country as their own, Anderson said. If the indictment of America came first, ideological blinders might prevent people from getting the point of the cartoon.

Anderson has published the full run of “Banana Republic” in one sturdy volume that’s available for purchase in stores across the Twin Cities and everywhere else online. (A book talk and cartoon presentation is set for Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m., at Common Good Books in St. Paul.) Besides providing sharp reproductions that put the often grubby original versions to shame, Anderson has added useful annotations for each installment – succinct reminders of the events (both national and local to Minnesota) that inspired each strip’s satire. That makes the book a kind of diary of an era that was so depraved, one inauguration won’t wash it away.

But if the national politics that inspired “Banana Republic” is seeing some of its excesses reversed, the media flux that freed up Anderson to try something new continues unabated.

In the Twin Cities, Anderson personified an important step in the disintegration of the daily press. When the St. Paul Pioneer Press laid him off in 2003 after eight years as editorial cartoonist (never replaced), it was as if an internal organ had gone missing.

Minnesota woke up in a cold media bathtub with an abdominal scar and a message scrawled on the mirror: Call an ambulance – one of your editorial cartoonists has been removed.

So when “Banana Republic” was implanted in the Star Tribune two years later, Anderson’s invention worked like an artificial kidney, efficiently processing a week’s worth of news with a few drops of ink and vitriol spread across a quarter-page of newsprint. It was unclear how the newspaper had ever functioned without it.

The “Banana Republic” serial came to a close Nov. 22, 2007, ended by editors who finally bowed to bean-counters — but whom Anderson holds blameless, thankful for 100-plus weeks of work that went way beyond what American newspapers normally allow (way, way beyond, if you consider the frequent depiction of melon-balling).

Editorial cartoonists have played the canaries in the media mines as America’s newspaper barons dig deeper for dwindling ad revenue. Anderson said he now hears of several dropping every month. “Satire will survive,” Anderson told The Minnesota Independent in an interview, but “editorial cartooning as we know it is dying.” His own work has shifted to animation for films and videos, such as the Flash animation promotion for the “Banana Republic” book above.

He said he’s satisfied with the strip’s transition from op-ed pages to book form. “I’m glad I did this and stuck it in one place. It does work as a whole.” And he’s not concerned that the book’s content is dated and obsolete. In fact, just the opposite: He is concerned that the book’s content remains disturbingly current. “Unfortunately, most of it still fits today,” Anderson said. “I worry that these issues are with us for a long time” — even under President Obama.

Minnesota Public Radio has also posted its own audio interview with Anderson.

Here are the stores in the Twin Cities where you can buy a copy of “Banana Republic.”

Mayday Books
True Colors Bookstore (formerly Amazon Bookstore)
Common Good Books
Big Brain Comics
Northern Sun Merchandise
Arise Bookstore
St. Martin’s Table
Schneider Drug Store