Product Description

Berkley Breathed's Bloom County was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed newspaper strips of all time. Bloom County ran from December 8th, 1980 to August 6th, 1989 and was published in an astounding 1200 newspapers on a daily basis. The huge popularity of Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus. The Bloom County Library Volume 1 highlights the first time the entire run of the immensely popular Bloom County strip has been collected in beautifully designed hard cover books with exceptional reproduction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2131 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-06
• Released on: 2009-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
As Berke Breathed says in the notes to this book, he didn't have a clue what Bloom County was going to be about. It was a place, he was filling it with characters, he could go off on whatever tangent he fancied. A strip about kids, about lawyers, about the elderly, about politicians, about monarchs, about penguins, about Ronald Reagan's America.. It took the Doonesbury format of a vast cast of characters with a central base and took it to the horizon. Bloom County could be about anything, and it frequently was.

But mostly about penguins.

Not at the beginning, of course, this first volume of Bloom County, covering three years of strips from 1980 to 1982, including the pre-Bloom County trial runs. And the ornate approach of IDW to the work juxtaposes with the incredibly rough early strips, and indeed some the published strips that have only been recovered from crumpled photocopies and indeed indeed some of the strips that were inked in the aisle seat of the plane as Berke hand delivered them across the country to hit a syndication deadline. His Opus for a decent scanner and broadband back in 1981, I'm sure...

The book emphasises just how unlikely such a collection as this was when being created - it's a topical strip, so the margins are full of notes explaining stories in the news and the relevance of people mentioned - often an entire gag rests on a non sequitor name, and you have to wait for the notes to have any hope of getting it, which can make for a different reading experience. But the strip does suit being collected like this, getting a month of Bloom in a single sitting does give a real sense of a location inside Berke Breathed's head, explored in linear fashion. Some of the jokes really don't work, but they don't need to when they're part of a richer tapestry.

And IDW have ensured that the tapestry is very rich indeed. Hardback, silk bookmark, thick paper, lush printing and colour, lots of behind the scenes gubbins, extras and restored jokes from when they were censored during publication. Get ready to make more space on your bookshelf. --bleedingcool.com

Berkeley Breathed's comic strip made sport of all the '80s' hot topics: Reaganism, the Moral Majority, the wedding of Charles and Di. Now it's back (with Volume I of a five-book set), as funny as ever and annotated. --Time Magazine

The first volume of IDW's "Bloom County: The Complete Library" collects all the strips--every last single one, including many that haven't been reprinted before--from the debut strip in December 1980 through September 1982. It's the best collected edition volume of a comic strip that I've seen to date. The book is unbelievably well put together, from editorial to the physical object, itself.
And it's only $40. Maybe that's because the majority of the book is in black and white, but I would have thought that a nearly 300 page hardcover bound on the side with the heaviest weight paper I've seen on a comic-related publication would be more expensive than that. I'm very happy that they managed to keep the price so reasonable.
Besides all the strips, there's a healthy introduction to the volume, led by a foreword from the strip's creator, Berkeley Breathed, who recounts the harrowing tales of flying to his editors while finishing inking the strip in the air, to the reason why he thinks the strip found popularity early on. That's just the first two pages. There follows a three page background piece by series editors Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, that places the strip in the context of its time period. You even get samples of Breathed's college strip that led to "Bloom County." Steve Dallas is the star, though it's a completely different strip. Some of the gags seen here are mined for "Bloom County" gags later in the volume, though, and they're kind enough to point those out to you.
The strips are annotated sparingly. "Bloom County" has a large number of then-current pop cultural references in it. Many, I'm sure, seem like antiquated notions to today's kids. Many may have been over the heads of the kids reading the strips in the first place back in 1980/1981/1982. But there they are, explained in a short paragraph next to the strip. Early references include Betty Crocker, the Selective Service, Bella Abzug, and J. Edgar Hoover. Even better, Breathed appears (though even less frequently) in italicized text to give extra thoughts on some strips. This is one failing of other such comic strip reprint projects. The creators are either no longer with us, or just unwilling to contribute as much as Breathed has to this particular project.
I was happy that I didn't really need any of those annotations as I read through them now. I guess I read them just to see what they thought was the most basic information needed to explain something to a younger reader.
The strips are presented three to a page, stacked close together, leaving all that white space in the margins for more commentary. The paper stock is solid white, and not thin. Nothing bleeds through in this book, not even the color Sundays. I initially thought the book had twice as many pages as it does, and that's due strictly to the heavier paper stock they used. It's great stuff. Some random strips look a little coarse, but that's due to the lack of a pristine original to shoot from. Trust me; it's not distracting. You'll notice it, but you'll be enjoying the strips too much to balk at those muddier images.
It really is like reading a new comic strip for me, though. Twenty years of maturity since the strip ended means that I can understand Steve Dallas to be a cad and a womanizer in a way other than oafishly charming. The characters often spout philosophical bits of wisdom that wouldn't have struck me as a kid, but that feel truthful and incisive to me today. "Bloom County" is about more than a talking penguin and a weird cat. In this first volume, we're just seeing the author finding that voice.
I can't wait to see more of it come into sharper focus. Five volumes in total are planned, so we've got lots of great reading ahead of us. --Comicbookresources.com

Customer Reviews

A Bloom County Gold Mine
I'm not sure what I expected from this book, having collected (over the years) every single BLOOM COUNTY book ever printed. I figured this new book wouldn't offer anything new, really, except for maybe some Berke Breathed commentary. But as I started reading, I noticed some strips that I didn't remember from the older collections, and yet they seemed vaguely familiar. Sure enough, after some back-to-back comparisons with books such as BLOOM COUNTY BABYLON, I've found that there are a great many strips here that have never been collected. We haven't seen a lot of these since they were originally in newspapers. I'm blown away by how "new" an experience this is. We'll see if that holds true for later strips, when BLOOM COUNTY really developed its personality. But these early strips are a revelation. Plus, there's a selection of Breathed's ACADEMIA WALTZ college strip. (Contrary to what he says about them in the book, I would really love a full collection of those too. They sound quite subversive.)

I do wish Breathed had offered more strip-by-strip commentary about his thoughts behind them. As they are, they're VERY sparse. The book's historical-context notes are nice to have, too, if obvious for an old guy like me.

Like a Phone Call from an Old, Old Friend
When I moved to Dallas from semi-rural North Carolina to attend college, of course, it was a culture shock in so many ways. And our campus newspaper at SMU, much to the dismay of many, published the charmingly nihilistic and always incisive "Bloom County" in every edition. I don't remember any book or idea that would provoke so much discussion and well-meaning disagreement around lunch tables and dorm rooms. Between the almost Hamlet-esque Opus (and his hilariously unrequited love for Connie Chung), the hopelessly vapid Steve Dallas, and Darwinian throwback Bill the Cat, just to name three, you would be hard pressed to find a cartoon strip that had such a calvacade of evolving, developing characters. Does this mean that "Bloom County" is the "best" comic strip ever? No, but when you talk about it in the same breath as you might talk about "Peanuts" or "The Far Side," or even the old ones like "Prince Valiant," "The Phantom," and "Dick Tracy," the label "best" as with all such comparisons fails to work. When you are that good, comparisons simply do not matter in the best of all possible ways.

But, in this volume, the fascinating thing is watching how Breathed evolved his strip from the first rough prints to the style and wit so familiar to mid to late 1980's "Bloom County" fans. I have never seen most of this work before, and it was a treat to see how the "Bloom County" universe just kind of "fell into place" over time in Breathed's almost organic trial and error approach to cartooning. That primer alone justifies the price of the book, especially, I would think, to advertising or art students, indeed anyone who deals with the graphic arts in some way or just appreciates the form. I note that the one negative reviewer (to date) in this thread found this jarring, the rough-hewn moving to the more constructed and deliberate. I can see how this would be so, and the criticism is a valid one from a certain point of view, but I think this is the wrong approach to the overall work.

I am so happy a friend of mine allowed to borrow this gem. In the reminding, it let me laugh and become reacquainted with a roster of some of the best cartoon characters yet created and some of the snappiest cartoon dialogue ever written in the long history of that great American art form, the "funny pages." For all of you old "Bloom County" fans out there, you finally have an anthology worthy of your time and money, as well as Breathed's great talent.

RECOMMEND, no reservation.

WIth Calvin the brightest light from our darkest age
Complaining about print quality here makes no sense to me. What kind of print quality did we read these with over a quarter century ago on pulpy newspaper? In any case, I can discern absolutely no loss of quality in the reproduction; they look fine to me.

Certainly I would have preferred a larger format, but again, this represents how they were published in most papers originally, which is why Watterston held out for Calvin, imposing sizes unseen since the Thirties Golden age. See his poorly bound The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin & Hobbes) (v. 1, 2, 3).

I can only see one very bizarre printing, and that is the end of the bear costume episode with Limekiller, which really seems inked by an amateur with a heavy Paper Mate Flair Tip-Guard Medium Tip Felt Porous Pens, 2 Black Pens(8432452PP) on a late night flight after three martinis. The rest of the strips are delicately lined and inked. The sight of those female legs upon that wheel-chaired lap are to die for, and the work of as real a draftsmen as Rembrandt: Master of the Portrait (Discoveries).

It is the content after all we read these for. The reference to a hospital bill at eleven thousand dollars reads true today, although the bill should be multiplied by ten at least. It is this kind of biting political comment we love him for, although he admittedly in the liner notes made compromises from the beginning. See his early college strips for what lies beneath.

This is my only complaint. The first time I read this was in a dimmer light, and those several liner notes are printed in a tiny font in a light color against similarly toned background. This is not a problem as most of those liner notes are not by BB and are useless. The ones by BB himself are mildly interesting, however, as long as you realize both in these notes and in his foreword he is having us on; he is joking like Buck Mulligan in Ulysses (Gabler Edition); he is ironic and just plain lying to amuse himself. Dudes, he is a comic, and a comic strip writer. The liner notes not by BB himself are rather odd; often they identify people and events well known to everyone, in the most general and thus erroneous way, and absolutely ignore items and references and people far more obscure and unknown. We could very well have done without these intermittent liner notes so difficult to read due to the font and its color; if something unknown comes up, we can look it up on wikipedia, but most often the humor is independent of such cultural background in any case!

It is very interesting to read the few selections from his college strip which got him started. Even though he claims (jokingly?) never to have read any other comic strip than Doonesbury, the earliest of these strips resemble strongly Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips (1956-1966).

Worth reading again for the memories of over a quarter century ago, this bright and consoling beacon in our darkest days of doom. Worth reading for the reflections it brings upon our present zeitgeist, and reading again and again. Unlike the Watterston complete collection, it endures repeated readings, a true hardcover work, not poorly glued like Watterston. But be sure to sign up now to receive Bloom County: Complete Library Volume 2 in early 2010, as the saga continues. I love this first volume to see how the strip might have developed, with the promising interplay amongst the residents of the boarding house. The Russian disappears with much humor that might have been; the cigar smoking dog, who was to be the main figure, disappears altogether (was it the nicotine addiction?) without a trace, as if Calvin lost Hobbes and never mentioned it. Limekiller, what, gets killed? By Gary Trudeau? and then the evolution of that complex Binckley . . . the one who so concerns his poor father, who first acquires a pet penguin, svelte, with small beak and reasonable sized eyes, that early penguin who comes and reappears six months later, quietly staring out pleadingly at the reader for an explanation of the oddities all around . . .

Get this, and prepare for volume two. It is well worth your while within this present gathering darkness . . .