Well, decades, anyway.
I’ve been reading Bloom County lately, and frankly I can’t imagine anything more appropriate to soak up during this election season. The face of American politics, it seems, has changed very little in the nearly 30 years since the comic above was published. Sure, the Democratic incumbent isn’t as laughably doomed as Mondale was in 1984, but the overall spirit of things has only grown more horrible, more satire-worthy since Berkeley Breathed occupied the comics page.
A few weeks ago, I embarked upon my Bloom Country re-experience with the “Complete Bloom County” collections I’d been grabbing as they published. I set aside the first volume one day with the intent to read it, but didn’t actually pick it up until the next day. The “picking up” part came about half an hour after I returned home from the grocery store, where I saw a clerk whose nametag read, “HAIG.”
“Wasn’t there some famous guy named Haig? Al Haig?” I wondered. I couldn’t place the name beyond something maybe political. So imagine my surprise when I was thumbing through Bloom County and one of the early comics made a joke about… Al Haig, with a footnote explaining who exactly he was.
Yesterday, I read a footnote in which Breathed mentioned writing the script for last year’s box-office bomb Mars Needs Moms, which I hadn’t thought about since… well, since it bombed at the box office. Imagine my surprise this morning when I walked past a coworker’s desk only to notice he was reading the Wikipedia entry about… Mars Needs Moms.
Basically, what I’m saying is that Bloom County is forever a part of our lives, even 25 years after its cancellation. Open your heart and let it in.
I had a soft spot for Outland, especially Milquetoast. I one time met Breathed at a reading of The Last Basselope and asked him to draw the lil Cockroach in my Bloom County TPB. Still is one of my most treasured possessions . . .Ahh the comics today pale in comparison . . . At least there’s still Doonsberry but man I miss Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County.
Man, I love Bloom County. I had all the original books and read them over and over again.
Hey, the original Mars Needs Moms book is one of the best kid’s books out there! Movie was shit, though..
The only non-C&H artwork I’ve seen from Bill Watterson were his comics making fun of Breathed.
I so miss those comic strips. Too bad they can’t rerun those instead of For Better or Worse in our local rag. I did love the way he ended the strip.
Alexis got me Mars Needs Moms a couple years back. She swapped copies with me after she found one Breathed had signed at a Half Price. So now I have the signed book next to Last Basselope, Goodnight Opus, A Wish For Wings That Work, and The Red Ranger Came Calling
God did I love Bloom County. read it every day as kid, drew Opus in class, had the old original books (still do) and bought the hardbacks since they have EVERY strip.
Nothing since tops it. Not even great stuff like Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy.