These days the Sunday Funnies are, with rare exception, a wasteland of the least funny, least amusing garbage outside of the New York Times Op-Ed page.  Apart from the 1930’s-inspired art of “Mutts,” there’s nothing there worth reading, let alone recommending.  It wasn’t always that way.  If we want to look way back, we can find the glory days of the Sunday strip.  Boasting titles like Winsor McCay’s astonishing Little Nemo, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, and Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, the strips of the 20’s and 30’s were massive, full page, full color affairs with art that hasn’t been challenged since. 

Fast forward to the late 1970’s, and the strips had shrunk in size as well as talent.  The art was mediocre, the writing was marginal at best - things were pretty bleak.  Thankfully, a new generation of artists and writers were about to explode onto the scene, and with them would come a new Holy Trinity of comic strips: The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, and Berkeley Breathed’s remarkable Bloom County.

Bloom County tackled topics like politics, popular culture, the aftermath of Vietnam, and feline substance abuse via a gaggle of sarcastic, irreverant, wise-beyond-their years kids.  They spent their days wandering the streets with a soulful penguin, a mangy cat, a wheelchair-boud veteran, and a sleazy lawyer.  At once hostile and heartfelt, sadonic and hopeful, every single day Bloom County managed to walk a fine line between anger and joy with a literary sensibility that set it apart from everything else in the paper.  If you were of the right age and mindset, the strip was hilarious, four color crack. 

IDW Publishing has collected every one of these strips, in chronological order, and is releasing them in a series of five hardcover collections called Bloom County – The Complete Collection.   Volume One is available now, and if you have ANY interest in politics, the 80’s, pop-culture, comics, or just want to laugh, it’s a must buy. 

With most collections like these, you have to begin with the caveat of “remember, these were published 30 years ago, so they may seem dated.”  Not so here.  While the heavy-handed tedium of Bloom County’s contemporary, Doonesbury, has grown dated and stale, Breathed’s work has managed to stay fresh.   In fact, one of the most compelling things about the book is how modern it all feels.  Yes, the political figures and references are from the 80’s, but the absurd humor holds up so well that even the most dated issues still manage to seem current.  Moreover, many of them, like the plight of farmers, injured veterans, and hippies who refuse to grow up, are sadly still with us today.

Another revelation is just how much of this material has never been reprinted before.  1983 saw the publication of ”Loose Tails,” the first Bloom County collection, which became an instant hit.  This book is several times its size, is packed to the gills, and chronoligically, only covers about two-thirds of the material.  Also, some of the strips the old books contained were altered, in some cases censored, by the publishers.  Everything here is as close to its original newspaper version as possible.   Beyond that, the Complete Collection contains a nice forward from Breathed, and selections from his college newspaper strip “The Academia Waltz.”  So, if you’re afraid you’ve already got everything in the Complete Collection, fear not.  You don’t, and discovering what you’ve been missing is part of the fun. 

I don’t know much about Breathed’s real-life political opinons, and frankly I don’t care.  This is one of those blissful times where I can put down the ideological axe and stop grinding for a few hours.  This book is a treasure and IDW deserves nothing but praise for the job they’ve done.  If you like politics, regardless of your views, you’ll love it. 

Besides, Ronald Reagan was a fan.  That should be a good enough endorsement for anyone.

- Robert Laurie