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 (14) (Please sign in to comment)
D-squared said, 3 months ago
I don’t particularly care for mimes either.
saywhatwhat said, 3 months ago
Here all the time, I thought his first name was Opus.
Thirdguy said, 3 months ago
He’s a babe! Who wouldn’t want him?
K.C. Fahel said, 3 months ago
Lowfat milk…yuk. White water is more like it.
Sisyphos said, 3 months ago
Juarez Tequila? With your Jerseycow Brand 2% Lowfat? What will George Will think? Or say? Shameless milk shill!
neatslob said, 3 months ago
The P stands for Penguin.
hariseldon59 said, 3 months ago
@saywhatwhat
Maybe the name’s reversed, like in Chinese.
MichaelJY said, 3 months ago
Does anyone remember the magazine ad that this is parodying? I think it was for an alcoholic beverage of some type. It might have been Absolute Vodka, I’m not sure.
elbeck said, 3 months ago
@MichaelJY
It was “Dewar’s Profiles,” but I guess those profiled were not necessarily well known. Enter “Dewar’s Profiles” on http://images.google.com to turn up quite a few samples.
fishbulb239 said, 3 months ago
No comments on his last book read or movie seen? Both are real titles, surprisingly. That the Princess Di book is real is truly amazing; the curious aspect of the Zippers movie is that Breathed picked a movie that seems to be pretty obscure. Whose picture is pinned to the dartboard?
bunnyman09 said, 3 months ago
Looks like Jesse Helms on the dartboard. Dan Rather to the left, and George Will on the typewriter.
locoboilerguy said, 3 months ago
Like the call Nancy post it. That one pops up again.
JoeCoolLives said, 3 months ago
I just noticed that Breathed’s signature on this comic is reversed…
’Hadn’t picked that up before – is (was) it common for Berkeley to do that???
ott70
said, 3 months ago
I think the backwards sig started showing up more in the latter half of the Bloom County run.