Loved it when it first came out…my wife and I still talk to each other in BC-speak from the early eighties now and then:
“Can YOU say public servant?”
“Just cough up some dough, Mac…”
“Two dips and a dad”
…and many more…
But though I liked Opus, Binkley, and Milo very much, I thought Steve Dallas dragged things down and I thought Bill the Cat was a waste of space. As Steve and especially Bill came to dominate more and more (or so it seemed to me) BC was no longer a must-read , and by the time the strip ended I had pretty much lost interest*. I’ll certainly read these new ones if he continues.
*God, it sucks when creative artists don’t do just what you want them to do, doesn’t it??
Calvin and Hobbes started up in the fall of 1985, and from Day 1, it was better than Bloom County was at the time. The Far Side, which started up in 1980, did eventually have its own arc into mediocrity, but it was a much more gradual arc: by the early to mid 1980s, I certainly looked forward to that day’s Far Side much more than that day’s Bloom County. By 1986 or so, Bloom County was even making the 1980s incarnation of Doonesbury look good by comparison: while Trudeau’s game had certainly fallen off a bit since the early to mid 1970s, he didn’t just go down the tubes either, but was able to sustain a pretty good level of quality for quite some time.
Sure, it’s hard to sustain greatness over time, but Bloom County’s peak was shorter, and its fall faster, than most other brilliant comic strips.
His FB page has a “Shop Now” button at the top which leads to a page of products for sale at berkeleybreathed.com. I assume that’s how he hopes to make money.
I know that it’s been awhile since I’ve given much thought to Breathed or Bloom County, but since this announcement, I’ve “Liked” his page which adds him to my FB feed. I’m sure I’m not the only one. He’s probably hoping that the increased traffic will lead to increased sales.
I didn’t find Bloom County until, by some posters’ reckoning, it had already gone downhill, so that shows you what I know. I loved it pretty much until the end. By the time Steve’s brain got trans-reversed, though, it was definitely on a downward slide.
Cool anecdote: a fellow writer in my graduate fiction writing workshop once used the phrase “zoom along to his manicurist” in a story. He was amazed when I was able to quote the exact Bloom County strip he stole it from.
I loved it in the 80’s but having reread it recently, I think it is pretty unfunny most of the time. Calvin & Hobbes on the other hand holds up.
Considering Bloom County’s competition in the comic pages during its run, almost anything with some life to it would have been good. So many of those comics were/are godawful.
It’s a bit weird. Opus has been asleep for the past 25 years, yet Milo, Mike, and Oliver, who have been awake and living through the past 25 years, have not aged at all.
And why 1990? That was a year into Outland. Is he saying that the entire strip never happened?
Let’s hope so. The man who never once made even a third-rate female character expected us to believe he was going to build a strip satirizing Reagan culture around a little black girl named Ronald Ann, after Reagan left office. Yes, it is possible to retroactively destroy a strip’s reputation.
You could like both Doonesbury and Bloom County. Sure, Bloom County was a second generation hack of Doonesbury, sort of like an Adult Swim cartoon using and making fun of a original at the same time. (Pearls Before Swine is a next generation take on the same concept, even more stupidified.) So? We needed both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The culture is big and stupid enough for both. (Unlike Julie Brown I don’t like them big and stupid.)
I thought the fail point was too much Steve Dallas, not too much Opus. That’s like Doonesbury making Duke a lead character instead of an added spice. The Opus rock group fiasco was a sign of the apocalypse, though.
And too much Bill the Cat. Although you had to be there to understand how huge Garfield was in the mid-80s. An anti-Garfield was funny. Approximately as long as Garfield was.
I was a pretty big fan of Bloom County, and it was no second rate Doonesbury. When Bloom County was running is was better than the Doonesbury of the time. Doonesbury never got back to the consistently great level it was at in the 70s.
But lets face it neither were as good as Calvin and Hobbes and I am glad Bloom County is coming back and I will hope it is funny again. I don’t worry about the 2 dismal Sunday strips, I largely ignored them then and will continue to do so but Bloom County was pretty awesome for a good run. Absolutely in my top 10 Comics of all time. Maybe top 5.
Of course it’s unfunny, NOW. Bloom County was (and hopefully IS) primarily political and cultural satire; you had to be living in the time and embroiled in the same politics & culture to get how funny it was. It will never be as funny when it’s taken out of the world & time it was created in.
For the same reason, Calvin & Hobbes is funny now. C&H’s themes are stunningly NOT political, NOT cultural. They’re general feel-good, emotional stories that will appeal to people of most times & cultures. I really don’t get people comparing the two strips; other than they were both comic strips in the 80s, they are nothing alike.
Imagine a comic set in London that was named London. I think it would be reasonable for someone to mention “The wealthy folk of London” without it being self-referential to the comic.