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 (30) (Please sign in to comment)
capndunzzl said, 3 months ago
…the good old days.
dukedoug said, 3 months ago
Nope ?
simpsonfan2 said, 3 months ago
Up in the attic, I was looking for something. Happened across some old newspapers we saved of major things. JFK Assassination, etc. Those newspapers were bigger than they are now.. They just shrink the paper, the comics…
surfstuff55 said, 3 months ago
Then they wonder why their business is shrinking!
gallar said, 3 months ago
It’s not the comics that have become smaller, just the readers….
Redkaycei Repoc said, 3 months ago
@simpsonfan2
I still have that one (JFK) Also the Moon Landing. They reside in my cedar chest.
James
said, 3 months ago
Obviously Breathed never saw the Internet coming.
bhinkle said, 3 months ago
The Sunday comics from the Asbury Park Press are nearly illegible they are so small. And the cut fhe first frame or so of many of them. And now they’re charging for on-line access.
Brian K
said, 3 months ago
When i was younger I thought Doonesbury and Bloom county were the same strip cuz of the animation lookin similar.
William Scott said, 3 months ago
And yet, you can’t zoom in on it here either…
vwdualnomand said, 3 months ago
another victim of a dying industry
kellymill1965 said, 3 months ago
This is like today the comics are getting smaller and the religion pages are getting bigger I not saying don’t get religion but laughter is the best medicine.
sdebarr said, 3 months ago
@simpsonfan2
I found some from the end of WWII in my Grandma’s garage. In these, the pages were large, but limited to about 10 pages per edition, I guess because of rationing.
Omnius said, 3 months ago
Nope, now newspapers are all shrinking down the print black hole. Now our funnies come to us electronically, that’s progress.
Ben Towle
said, 3 months ago
The reduction in strip size has been steady and pretty dramatic. This great image popped up online last week—size comparison of a single 1928 newspaper comic with the entire comics section from a 2013 paper:
Link