Comic Review #10: Bloom County (1980 - 1989) & Outland (1989 - 1995) & Opus (2003 - 2008)

 

It may shock you but I was a weird kid. Actually I'm sure that shocks no one. Anyway, My uncle well kinda hoards stuff. It's not as bad as it could be because he has a family but damn I'd hate to see what his place would look like if he didn't. He had an insane amount of junk for such a small house that they lived in.  This house will probably come up again in other posts on this blog because for a time my family and I lived there. I kinda loved that house despite it being connected to other houses with walls so thin you could break them if you wanted too.

The point I'm trying to get too but can't because I'm a fucking wordy ass bitch when it comes to well just about anything. I could probably talk to you about pear picking and it's not even that I like to hear my self talk it's just I like to make sure you get a good picture of what I'm talking about. Anyway, my uncle must have owned every issue of a magazine published here in Newfoundland called the Newfoundland Herald. It had celebrity stuff in it too, and not for the three people in Newfoundland who can kind of maybe be called celebrities, Like Shannon Tweed. Or Gordon Pinsent. Yeah you have Arnold Scwartznegger but we got the voice of Babar! 

The Newfoundland Heralds went back to at LEAST the early 1980s and I loved looking at the articles, even the tv listings (hey I was a weird kid) and would read the comics in the back of the comic. One of those comics was Bloom County by a very weird man named Berke Breathed. Bloom County ran from December 8, 1980 to August 6, 1989. A lot of this comic was satire on the 1980s and politics of that era and all kinds of things but there still was a lot to enjoy for a kid like me. I enjoyed the fact that kids were big members of the cast (Milo and Binkley). Plus I always enjoyed the way his art looked. It was apparently a lot like Doonesbury but only big losers read Doonesbury.

I also enjoyed the stories these characters would go on. One of them was about religious fundamentalism going after secular penguinism. Bill The Cat became Fundamentally Oral Bill and went after Opus who had to leave town due to bigotry. secular penguinism is clearly a stand in for homosexuality, hell Opus even says "Guess I'm out of the closet" in one of the strips. He ends up becoming a stripper and then getting lost in the desert. I just liked seeing how these stories would go. Another great one was about Cat Scalp Tonic. Tonic that was made out of Cat Sweat, it could give bald men hair again, like Oliver Wendell Holmes' dad. Who was a very underrated character. The interactions between the kids and their parents were always a lot of fun. I think this comic helped me grow a lot of my socially liberal ideas on society and stuff, seeing as the Cat Sweat Scalp Tonic was well taking the piss out of the whole War on Drugs thing. 

I recently, as in just 30 minutes ago reading some of the really early stuff. Like with characters before Opus and the animals became a big part. I'm sure I will end up missing Otis Oracle and The Major when they finally no longer get used but some of these characters are not great. Like the Ashley Dashley III guy. still a lot of these comics I've never read before and is really neat and a bunch made me laugh out loud. The one with Opus the penguin and the Hare Krishna will never get old. "JUST COUGH UP SOME DOUGH, MAC!" 

Donald Trump, just like how he ruined America as President, also ended up buying Bloom County and firing everyone. He was in Bill the Cat's body at this time. Yeah, this comic strip got weird and I think that's a big thing about why I loved it. Anyway this was in 1989, I don't know this for certain but I believe the strip ended because he wasn't allowed to do a series on Scientology. Just imagine people were talking about those nutbars in 1989!  I don't know this for certain though. 

I'm not completely sure if that Scientology internet rumor is true because he went right into doing another comic, called Outland. This comic starred a bunch of new characters who were okay I guess. Mortimer Mouse,  long lost brother to Mickey had some to him but the other guy who I think was an otter wasn't that great. All of these new characters end up getting replaced by the old guys and Outland just ends up feeling like a watered down Bloom County. No long stories because that's hard when the strip was once a week on Sunday, but I gave up on Foxtrot when it went to Sunday only too. Actually I probably left that strip before that, still my feelings on Foxtrot will have to wait until THAT blog post. There is still a top tier comic in Outland. It's this one here. 

I don't even know why I'm making another paragraph here because you could easily take what I said about Outland and do it to Opus, the 3rd of his strips that started in 2003. I do think it started stronger but by the end just felt like he wasn't into it any more. I dunno none of these two relaunches did much for me. Not awful, still worth owning the books of them but they aren't amazing or anything. However, I must say that his 3rd relaunch of Bloom County that started in 2015 actually is really great. He does it on Facebook and adds comics when he feels like it. He's also messing around with what you can do in a comic strip because the internet adds more to that really. Longer strips and all that. It's a good time really. I don't have those books IDW put out but I really should fix that. Also fix the fact I have no Foxtrot books anymore. 

FINAL VERDICT:  I think Bloom County is great fun and should be read by all. Tons of fun characters and all that. I'm pretty sure the only comic I haven't talked about by Berke Breathed is his college newspaper one The Academia Waltz, which is a comic I know nothing about except that it had Cutter John and Steve Dallas in it. He's been working with those characters for literally 45 years. That's amazing. Those two are the only two who appeared in all five strips.