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 (12) (Please sign in to comment)
wecatsgocomics said, 3 months ago
Apology not accepted. Just go ahead and print the next one in line (that you actually HAVE).
saywhatwhat said, 3 months ago
@wecatsgocomics
That would seem logical… it’s not like they are going by calendar dates… like following yesterday the 6th of March from some certain year. In the past few weeks we have had all weekend strips.
Sisyphos said, 3 months ago
Ho hum….
henebry said, 3 months ago
@saywhatwhat
Yeah, and that’s what makes me think they’ve got an intern scanning comics in the basement. Somehow this intern’s photoshop skills aren’t great, and sometimes the throughput of bloom county strips is less than 1/day.
Dunestrider said, 3 months ago
Well if it wasn’t for GoComics, I wouldn’t be able to read this comic at all (at least, not for free). So I’m not complaining.
katina.cooper said, 3 months ago
All right. I finally won the bet with myself. It’s been two weeks since I won the beer bet. It’s early, but I don’t care.
Omnius said, 3 months ago
Please stop posting this garbage about bill ate it and just don’t post anything. This lame excuse is worse than not posting anything. If there’s no comic then there’s no comic and there should be no posting of lame excuses, just like Pigborn when there’s no Pigborn cartoon some days.
Strod said, 3 months ago
@saywhatwhat
No, no. They are rerunning all Sunday strips chronologically, including the missing ones.
They started a few months ago with Sunday strips from 1982, and now they are rerunning the ones from March, 1985. Yesterday’s was the one from March 17, today’s is from March 24. The good news is that tomorrow we should see a funny profile of Opus.
I think it’s all my fault. Anyway, in around four months we should reach the strips from July 1987. That’s where we left off on October 15 of last year when the strip from July 22, 1987 was rerun. Before then, we only got dailies. Since then, we only get Sundays, many of which are missing. Hopefully we will start getting all the strips in order in a few months.
Strod said, 3 months ago
@Omnius
You are assuming that someone is actually choosing to post the “Bill ate it” cartoon when a strip is missing from the archives. I think you don’t realize that this is all automated: they are re-running what they have in the archive for the corresponding date, without any human intervention. And it so happens that for most missing strips the archive actually has something: the “Bill ate it” notice.
So just relax and wait patiently, or if your craving for Bloom County strips is so big just dive into the archives and get the next strip yourself.
MagicFan said, 3 months ago
@Strod
Your link has the “Bill ate it” thing there.
Horst Hrubbisch said, 3 months ago
“Spit.”
Strod said, 3 months ago
@MagicFan
Yes, that’s precisely the point.