Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume 1

by Berkeley Breathed

Overview

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.

The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints...The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time.” - Scoop


Winner of the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781600105319
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Series:	Bloom County Library , #1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	11.10(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	13 - 16 Years

About the Author

Berkeley Breathed lives and works in Santa Barbara, California and is the proud owner of a gentle pit bull named Ridley, a deaf dachshund named Milly, and a refugee mutt from the Puerto Rican streets named Pilar—splendidly flawed dogs, every one.

Editorial Reviews

Bloom County, that satirical and widely loved fixture of 1980s newspapers (and winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning), has receded from public notice of late. Luckily, we have this welcome reminder of its greatness, the first of five planned volumes reprinting the strip's complete run (with Sunday installments in color), including many strips never before reprinted. At first, Breathed cycles through a temporary cast of small-town Midwestern oddballs while contrasting precocious liberal schoolboy Milo Bloom with his militarist grandfather and pitting liberated schoolteacher Bobbi Harlow against obnoxious would-be suitor Steve Dallas. Then political jokes become more common, with a Doonesbury influence (noted by Breathed in revealing annotations) evident. Finally, after a brief early cameo, the naive but lovable Opus the penguin joins the cast in January 1982, and the strip begins to hit its hilarious stride. VERDICT Print quality is variable; some strips here are actually better reproduced in Loose Tails (1983), the very first Bloom County collection. But the gags are funny from day one and only improve from there. Few strips deserve the "complete collection" treatment more; highly recommended.—S.R.

Library Journal