Bloom County turns 30

Alan Gardner December 13, 2010 1 minute 6 comments

Geoff Boucher, writing in the Hero Complex blog of the LA Times, notes that last week was the 30 year anniversary of Bloom County.

I grew up in south Florida and fell in love with newspapers by reading the Miami Herald, which had one of the most personality-packed staffs in America – crime reporter Edna Buchanan, future bestelling novelist Carl Hiaasen, humorist Dave Barry and sports-page graybeard Edwin Pope. Fitting right in with the paper’s ethos was Breathed’s syndicated strip, and without a doubt, the frequent journalism imagery within its panel influenced my path, which began in eighth grade when I wrote a story for the Pines Middle School student newspaper. The topic? How to collect and grade comic books. There was a photo with it of me holding an issue of “X-Men” with a glorious Neal Adams cover. We can all see where that led …

If you’re still looking to buy yourself (let’s admit it… you do buy for yourself, right?), IDW has printed the first three complete collections of Bloom County. Amazon has them steeply discounted.

Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 (Bloom County Library)

Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 2: 1982-1984 (Bloom County Library)

Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 3: 1984-1986 (Bloom County Library)

Comments ⁶

Scott Kurtz

Can it be an anniversary if the comic strip isn’t running anymore?

Shane Davis

Best.
Strip.
Ever.

Ted Rall

Um, what Scott said.

Alan, you’re going too far with this anniversary stuff.

Dan Hudson

4 weeks ago( November 18th) was the 25th anniversary of Calvin and Hobbes and I never heard a mention anywhere of that

Thomas Overbeck

If we’re talking semantics, maybe “birthday” would be better.

At any rate, I owe a lot to Bloom County in terms of influential stuff. It’s still my all-time favorite comic, and the strips still hold up well after all these years.

Frank White

Sigh I hold my hands up….Bloom County just isn’t the strip for me and I promise never to say another bad word about it

Comments are closed.