Bloom County 2015

Here's something to cheer about.  A short time ago, I posted my tribute to the great '80s comic strip Bloom County.   The strip was one of the great pleasures of the eighties, running from 1980 to 1989, and caught the spirit of that odd and quirky decade.

Now, a few days ago, we received word that the comic's creator, Berkeley Breathed was bringing back the comic on an irregular basis, publishing the new strips on his facebook page.  The second installment of Bloom County 2015 just came out, with Opus pondering his status as an eighties relic. (Click each of those links and the new strips are in the articles.)

As an eighties relic myself, this is joyful news indeed!

UPDATE:

Just noted this article by Sean Nelson in The Stranger, titled "I'm Trying to Stay Excited About the Return of Bloom County."

Nelson makes some good points. He says that he has been very excited about the return of Bloom County.  But he also "can't help wondering whether maybe Bloom County was so about the ‘80s that it never should have left them." Further along, he notes: "When Breathed retired the strip in 1989 (replacing it with the conceptually distinct, ultimately indistinguishable, yet massively inferior Outland for reasons passing understanding), it marked the end of something very dear to those of us whose little sensibilities it helped shape. . . . But the ‘90s came in hard and the collective comedic sensibility morphed immediately into the assumption of bemused skepticism."

Nelson struck on something very true in his article. Bloom County came out at a very unique time, and was very much a part of its time. The eighties, for all its good and bad, had a particular sensibility . . . one that allowed for a particular, lighthearted, sometimes oddball, sometimes absurdist, comedic view of things.  Notably, the '80s featured a blossoming of the comics pages with this quirky sensibility, with the likes of Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbs, The Far Side, and the more mainstream Garfied.

For so many of us, the comics pages of the '80s brought many a joyful time. But, as they say, all good things must end. It is true that when the '90s came with its darker worldview, it swept all of that away. The end of that era really was something that many of us still feel . . . the feeling of something we knew in our youths, but now missing.

Nelson concluded with a show of support for the return of Bloom County, and this hopeful thought (which I share):

"Maybe now that we appear to have re-entered an age of piety, cant, and psychotic superciliousness, the time will be ripe for the return of Opus, Bill the Cat, Steve Dallas, Binkley, Cutter John, et al.—representatives of a time when you didn’t have to say anything too off-the-wall in order to be the good kind of shocking."

Garfield

In my two most recent posts, I described my '80s-era love of the comic strips Bloom County and The Far Side. As I noted, they were a part of my daily routine, and brought to my day some quirky, oddball humor that was distinctly '80s.

There was also one more comic that I read daily, except it was less cutting edge in its style.  The strip was the relatively mild, "down to earth" Garfield, which featured a lazy, fat lasagna-loving feline.  I found the strip's light humor enjoyable, however, especially since my own family actually had a cat (a Garfieldish yellow-orange striped cat, no less) which had a personality very much like the strip's protagonist. My mother, in particular, would comment that the strip so accurately captured the feline personality.   

Back in the '80s, Garfield  was very popular, and you saw the character everywhere. Here, for example, he's featured in a hotel commercial from 1987.

The Far Side

My last post celebrated one of my most well remembered '80s comics, Bloom County. But the 1980s were a great time for newspaper comics, and for a certain zippy oddball quirkiness that seemed to be present in culture. Bloom County was one example of this, but there were others too.  

The Far Side  was a single-panel comic that exhibited a wonderfully bizarre sense of humor. 

I'm not sure exactly how unusual The Far Side would seem today, but back in the '80s, they brought forth a refreshing sense of absurdity. 

Along with Bloom County, The Far Side was one of my daily "must reads" in the comic pages of the paper. And it was a comic that, seriously, once read, often remained in my mind for the rest of the day. It was one of the things that defined my teen years in the oddball colorful '80s, and it was one of the things that got me through my adolescence . . . the humor and the sense of absurdity about life and culture and reality.

Bloom County

Back in the '80s, one of my daily routines was to read the comics section of the paper. And the '80s were an excellent time to read the comics. One of my fave comics was Bloom County, a topical comic full of outlandish characters who made light of the culture of the eighties.  It featured an oddball menagerie of characters, such as the hapless Opus the penguin (or "flightless waterfowl" as he would characterize himself) who found himself in any number of odd situations. When life became too intense, there was always the dandelion patch to retreat to.

Bloom County would frequently make me laugh out loud... and often, I would remember the comic throughout the day. While I was in many a high school class, I would often struggle to stifle a laugh from the memory of some Bloom County strip I had read earlier.. I found it that funny.

In addition to Opus, the characters included smarmy attorney Steve Dallas, young newspaper editor Milo Bloom, and the catatonic feline Bill the Cat. Bill's verbiage was limited to monosyllabic guttural responses, as shown in the above strip.

There was a sensitive young boy named Michael Binkley, who had an "anxiety closet" containing his worries. I always thought this was wonderful metaphor for the real life worries that kids (and adults) have.  

And there was a young genius named Oliver Wendell Jones, who was frequently seen in front of his computer.  At one point, he hacked into the Soviet newspaper Pravda, where he attempted to further peace by posting the fake headline "Gorbachev Urges Disarmamant: Total! Unilateral!", but his faulty translation of Russian made it instead "Gorbachev Sings Tractors: Turnips! Buttocks!"

Anyway, Bloom County started in 1980, and grew and evolved with the decade, finally posting its last strip in 1989. Afterward, the comic's creator Berkely Breathed produced a follow up strip called Outland in the '90s, and an Opus strip in the 2000's.  But I (and many others) remember most fondly those wonderful '80s era Bloom County strips. It provided an opportunity to laugh at the '80s culture and happenings around us, both good and bad, in a thoughtful and good natured spirit.  

It gently dealt with all the stuff in all our '80s anxiety closets, and when things got too intense, we could always seek refuge in that dandelion patch in our own minds.