Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip that dealt with socio-political issues as seen through the eyes of highly exaggerated characters (e.g. Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and humorous analogies.
Creator Berkeley Breathed's first regularly published strip, Academia Waltz, appeared in the Daily Texan in 1978. The strip attracted notice from the editors of the Washington Post who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Cutter John.
Bloom County earned Berkeley the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. The strip eventually appeared in over 1,200 newspapers around the world until he retired the daily strip in 1989, stating, "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon. The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age less gracefully than their creators". The comic continues in recirculation on GoComics!
© Berkeley Breathed - All Rights Reserved.
Bliss by Harry Bliss
Bo Nanas by John Kovaleski
Comments (21) (Please sign in to comment)
exoticdoc2 said, 4 months ago
It returns just in time. I was starting to think Bloom County was dead. I thought about following up with “long live Outland,” but it kinda sucked.
wsimano said, 4 months ago
Whoever is in charge of this comic strip needs to get off of the booze and drugs and pay attention to his job. If Bill the Cat gets blamed for eating the comics strip one more time I’ll have to delete it from my list of comics.
masterskrain said, 4 months ago
So who knew Oliver had Windows 8 way back then??
Thank goodness I have all 5 volumes of “The Complete Bloom County” on my bookshelf, so I can just look up whatever strip Bill Eats.
dukedoug said, 4 months ago
@masterskrain
Please post them for us.
Sisyphos said, 4 months ago
Oh, no! Oliver’s committed involuntary teddycide! Blew his head clean off!
vwdualnomand said, 4 months ago
nowadays, ollie’s computer will not be a that, but touch screen, all in one, space saver, or an tablet/ipad.
ananomoose said, 4 months ago
Bill must be full today.
henebry said, 4 months ago
What makes this strip perfect is the fact that the teddy bear’s mind was blown.
nurbz said, 4 months ago
@exoticdoc2
yeah…and every band that had a hit….thier songs all sound the same….7%^P
Omnius said, 4 months ago
The good old days of computers in the 1980’s, so expensive yet so not powerful.
GreggW
said, 4 months ago
There was a great “Married… with Children” episode that attacked home computers as glorified paperweights. That was back in 1989.
Night-Gaunt49 said, 4 months ago
I’m afraid Oliver Wendell Jones would need to build his own computer since the one he has is so weak. And he would need to be asking those questions of a Cray super computer of that time or today’s version. Even so the answer may not be to his liking.
Redkaycei Repoc said, 4 months ago
@Night-Gaunt49
42
e.boo.r12 said, 4 months ago
I can’t say I have ALL the Bloom County books, But I did buy a lot of them when I lived there in the 80’s.
“Did ya forget me, Billy ?”
starbase502
said, 4 months ago
From back in the days when people didn’t really understand what computers were. Just like they don’t really understand guns today.