Country Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Baanan

Baanan in 1984

Johan Baanders (May 11, 1955 - September 1991) was a Brunanter comics artist, best known for the comic strip Micropolis. He signed as Baanan, a wordplay on his surname and the Dutch word for "banana" (banaan).

Biography[]

Baanders was born in Koningstad.

His first comics were How Lovely! and Unlucky Lucy, strips written by Hans Leerdam and published in Wop!.

By far the best known comic by Baanan is Micropolis. It started in 1984 in Wop! and was heavily influenced by the American underground comix. It featured many colorful characters, including a neurotic professor and a omnipresent prankster with a banana-shaped head, a caricature of Baanan himself.

When Wop! ceased publication, he self-published the next issues of Micropolis and in 1986 he took it to Grotschildering. It became the magazine's most popular feature and made Baanan a central figure of the underground movement in Brunant. He left the magazine's creative team in 1988.

Parallel to his work in Grotschilderun, Baanan worked on Aspirini en Kann, a new hybrid form of comics. In this new hybrid form, the homonymous protagonists interacted with characters from well-known Brunanter comics, such De Arabier and The Black Cat. Baanan actually photocopied panels from these comics after rewriting the dialogue balloons and the captions. Today, the four self-published issues of Apirini en Kann are the object of worship by collectors.

Unlucky Lucy stories were collected in a single volume in 1990.

In September 1991, Baanders was found dead in his apartment of a heroin overdose.

Legacy[]

Michiel Borst has called Baanan "a great underground artist", while N. Jones has dubbed him "the Andrea Pazienza of Brunanter comics". Miquel Belerio was particularly influenced by Baanan and his DIY ethic.

Microstad, a small publishing house based in Roodstad, was named after Baanan's Micropolis series. In 2000 it published a collection of all strips in a single hardcover volume, titled Total Micropolis.

Bibliography[]

Title Year(s) Publisher Notes
Micropolis 1985 - 1986 Self-published Three issues
Aspirini en Kannib 1987 Self-published Four issues
Unlucky Lucy 1990 Inkpress Written by Hans Leerdam
Total Micropolis 2000 Microstad Posthumous release
Advertisement