As much as I like Dilbert, Pearls, Fuzzy and the rest, Bloom County is ‘Comic Stripping 101′. I’ve always thought it was the Alpha and Zulu of newspaper strips. It had it all: fantastic characters, hiarious story lines, scalpel like humor sheatherd in strip friendly goofiness, wonderful art and beautiful line…who else is doing that?

Although most fans put Calvin & Hobbes at the top of the heap, I have to give it to Mr. Breathed. Bloom County had no gimmicks to rely on like Calvin’s Walter Mitty fantasy life or a stuffed/alive/stuffed/alive feline principal.

No, the Mighty Bloom Daily Strip had to fly on the power of great writing, energetic satire, up to the minute timeliness,elegant illustration and the best cast of characters since Pogo.

And it did it day after day for almost 10 years. What a hell of a standard for any ‘toonist anywhere, anytime.

Frankly, I always thought that Garfield and Calvin were the newspaper strips answer to the Beatles – everyone loved them, they were adorable and cute, everyone like what they did and could quote them or talk about them, but they were never truly that dangerous and never pushed the envelope very hard.

Well, if Garfield and Calvin were the Beatles, then Bloom County was the Rolling Stones. It was dangerous, it was rude, it was up in the face sometimes, but it had the writing and artwork to back up its attitude.
When the dailies ceased production, the comic strip industry lost a lung, half it’s teeth and most of it’s onions.

And any comic stripper that pisses off Pat Oliphant has GOT to be on the right track.

Anyway, I do sincerely hope that a new generation of comic strippers discover Bloom County for the first time in these new books.

My hope is the new Bloom County books would motivate an entire new legion of fresh talent to push the door open and do for today’s newspaper pages what Mr. Breathed did for them in 1981 – make them funny *and* sharp again.

End of rant.

Sorry.

And Mr. Breathed, please send the check via Registered Mail for tracking purposes.
Thank you.

I’m intrigued by the idea of the context pages in this book. So much of Bloom County was a product of it’s time, but does it really need that much explaining?

Perhaps as time marches on and younger people discover Breathed’s work it might be warranted. Does this mean this new collection is aimed toward a second generation of Bloom County fans, rather than the readers who enjoyed the strip when it was being produced?