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 (11) (Please sign in to comment)
Kosaka Jinnai said, 3 months ago
Hey, the end panel is missing.
Thirdguy said, 3 months ago
No photoshopping there!!
dukedoug said, 3 months ago
There’s no sign in the top panel.
Sisyphos said, 3 months ago
Has this cartoon been castrated? Where’s the punchline? What did the FEC do to the “political cartoonist”?
djmalloy said, 3 months ago
This was in the days before “Photoshop” was a word, either a proper noun or a verb.
surfstuff55 said, 3 months ago
i’d still vote for Bullwinkle!
George Tirebiter said, 3 months ago
@surfstuff55
It would be an improvement…
Darren Blair said, 3 months ago
@Sisyphos
The “punchline” is that the photos in question were still edited from the originals.
Night-Gaunt49 said, 3 months ago
What Darren Blair said, the joke is the obviously faked photographs.
THEVIC IOUSDOUG MARTIG said, 3 months ago
Excuse moi! is it not “Pugsley” (I know I have been wrong before)
ujean said, 3 months ago
Political commentary was a lot more fun when the art was all hand-drawn. Everybody knew it was parody, insult and intended solely to score points with the voters. Mow we have to have professional photoanalysts go over every casual phone cam snapshot looking for evidence of tampering. followed by weeks of"did not! did so!" in the media. I long for the days when a horde of barbarians came over the hills and wiped out the current dynasty and replaced it with an honest, psychopathic warlord.