- Yuge! 30 years of Doonesbury on Trump. G. B. Trudeau. A compilation of Doonesbury strips featuring or commenting on the shenanigans of Donald Trump (hardly even exaggerated, given that the man is practically a living caricature), covering the 80’s (ostentatious yachts perpetually circling his casinos), the 90’s (said casinos driven to bankruptcy), the 2000’s (hosting a morally repulsive game show) and the current 2010’s (political circus that ended in a real life nightmare).
As it is the “Doonesbury” strip, there are thousands of recurrent characters, and lots of arcs will be seemingly forgotten or left unsolved —although, most of them have a pretty easy to grasp personality and history. While one wishes the author’s introduction had given as much attention to the ongoing storylines and characters as to the importance of satire in general, it is nevertheless an entertaining compilation.
It has been hailed as something of a warning (indeed author Trudeau has appeared on actual tv shows and been asked how he predicted Trump’s presidency) —yet, reading the strip, it’s rather obvious that anybody with a grasp on American history and celebrity excesses knew it would head that way. Which may say more about the public at large than about the comic strip…
Either way, the result is a book that is still worth revisiting, not just to laugh for a while but to see what disasters might yet be fixed and prevented in the near future.
(P.S. For anybody wondering, “Yuge” is, I’m told, a stereotypical New York pronunciation of “Huge”)
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