Bloom County: Missing or Altered Strips

Cafe Society
1

Having been a rabid Bloom County fan in my youth, in addition to reading the dailies, I’ve bought and read each and every book (except for the 25 years of sundays one). Today, I was looking at some strips and came across this strip (the top one) which I’m pretty sure has never been in one of the books. Which brought up a question of “Why?” as well as a few others that I’ve had for a while:

  • Why were some strips altered between newspaper and book? I mean I understand that some may be considered offensive, and the original punchline is put back in when it’s published in book form, but the one that sticks out most in my mind is the Sunday one where the last frame is something along the lines of “New emergency! Opus is losing his marbles!”. The one I saw in the paper had a pretty funny response from Opus, but all that’s in the book is “Well, it was to be expected” (or words along those lines). And that’s not the only example of a funny line being changed for an unfunny one.

  • Why was the order of some strips changed? For example, there was one point where one of the main characters was missing, but appeared in the book showed up for several strips before their return… I’ll have to look that one up for ya :slight_smile:

  • Why are some strips left out? I remember several strips about Oliver building his own nuclear explosive (including one showing it in the science fair compared to all the other projects), but only two ever made it to book (the teacher saying “fire drill people!” even though the safety’s on and his father’s reaction, i.e. grounding), especially when some of the ones missing were completely hilarious and built the story line?

2

I’m not sure how they chose which strips would make it to the books. There were 3,164 strips over the history of the comic, so a few are going to be overlooked.

I don’t recall any being altered, though. There were a few that didn’t get printed. In one, Opus was replaced by another character who proclaimed, “Reagan sucks!”. My local paper didn’t carry that one.

I have downloaded nearly every strip from Ucomics.com (you can access to the entire run with a subscription) and have all the strips except for 158 strips that they don’t have (yet).

3

They also drop the ones that just aren’t funny. Breathed was(is) a genius, but he was iffy sometimes. Why reprint garbage?

4

There were a number of Peanuts strips that have never been reprinted in book form, either. I guess when you have drawn as many strips as Breathed and Schulz have, you can choose which of your cartoons you believe to be the best.

5

Wait – what 25 years of Sundays one? BC didn’t run for 25 years, but IS there a book of only Sundays? Because there are many Sunday BCs that were never in the books, that I’d give up a kidney to see again.

6

The one comic I remember being altered had a little kid saying "BULL**!"** but in the book version it was changed to "B*****!"** Publishers get cold feet sometimes, I guess.

I don’t recall Opus’s “marbles” line being changed though. Do you remember what he originally said?