Bloom County

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Bloom county is a small town that houses a wide cadre of interesting, exciting and sometimes insane characters. The comic strip ran from 1980 to 1989, although various later incarnations by the author incorporated many of the Bloom County characters. Bloom County is a topical and influential comic that satirizes modern life, including religion, politics and everything in-between.

Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County is hard to explain in a cohesive way - the fictional town contains an impossible combination of inhabitants, including Opus the Penguin, the amoral lawyer Steve Dallas, the completely insane Bill the Cat, and many more beloved characters. Somehow, they all work together, and the results are explosively entertaining.

Breathed incorporated new and exciting illustration techniques for Bloom County, including the silly but effective use of "photocopying" (often used in background pictures), as well as fun promotional ideas such as including flexi-disc records in the treasury books sold in stores. Reading Bloom County is exciting because it incorporated daily events using interpretations no one could see coming. Ridiculous things happened, concepts and situations were taken to the absolute extreme - and it all made a sort of sense in Bloom County.

The stories in Bloom County were soap-opera in nature. Although the cast of the comic is ensemble, the main character is probably Opus, as he is the central thread that runs through many of the myriad Bloom County adventures. Everything from 1980s pop-culture is explored in Bloom County, and the comic books themselves serve as an excellent education in everything that went on during that decade. From Reganomics to televangelists to Lionel Ritchie - the reader will not only get a history of what occurred, but understand the resonance of the events that took place. Plus, the comic itself is laugh out-loud funny. Never too serious, Bloom County prides itself in taking things to their logically silly extremes - and the results are amazing. Bloom County holds its own after all these years, and the comics should have pride of place in any collection.

Other Books by Berkeley Breathed

In 1987, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Not content to sit on his laurels, he has branched out to children's and kids books, which include:

• A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story
• The Last Basselope: One Ferocious Story
• Goodnight Opus
• Red Ranger Came Calling
• Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big
• Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound
• Mars Needs Moms!
• Pete and Pickles

Bloom County Collectibles For Sale...
Bloom County Books, Bloom County Mugs
Bloom County Plush, Bloom County Collectibles and more!