Bloom County "Loose Tails" (Berke Breathed)

I recently saw "Secondhand Lions (New Line Platinum Series)" on DVD in which a comic strip artist relives his boyhood with a pair of amazing (if a bit daft) great uncles. At the beginning and the end of the movie, there are examples of the artist's work on the walls and his drawing table. At the beginning of the film, the glimpses of his work are very brief. But at the end, the director gives you are good, long look at the pages of artwork. I was shocked. I translate for the younger readers out there. My responses were "WTF?" and "OMG!" I knew who had drawn those pages. I waited through the credits to confirm what I already knew. Berkeley Breathed. And why, you may ask, do I remember the artwork of Berkeley Breathed? I was in my early 20's when Bloom County, and certain bits of the comic strips have welded themselves to my brain. Milo Bloom's editor screaming, "Run that baby!" The babe who ordered Binkley to "Ignite my toes, Romeo." The farmer telling the governor "Tain't corn. S... Read more

If you remember the eighties, this book, the first collection from the "Bloom County" syndicated comic strip will be hysterically funny. If you do not remember the eighties, then it will just be funny. I remember the eighties and I laughed when I read these cartoons the first time and I laughed when I read them again. No one captured the moods, social movements and absurdity of their combination as well as Breathed did. His exaggerated characters and references to the anxieties of the moment were a dose of reality encased in the fiction of a cartoon strip. I never missed it and neither should you.

It is very hard not to a like a cute talking penguin, and Breathed presumably realised this when coming up with Opus. The human characters that surround the odd animal are supposed to come off somewhat loopier. This is a fun look at the period and the politics, and highly entertaining. Aack!

Here you will find the beginning of one of the most inspired comic strips ever put to paper. No other strip made me laugh as hard, or as often, as "Bloom County". In fact, pretty much nothing else in the whole wide world made me laugh as hard as this divine creation of Mr. Berke Breathed. Here we are introduced to the Milo Bloom, Steve Dallas, Cutter John and by far the best-known comic Penguin ever - Opus.Here we can see that Bloom County was just crackling with creativity and a real desire to "cut loose" from the beginning. Some of the strips covered "current events" and were topical, meaning circa 1980, but if you were around for any of that time it's a nostalgic trip back to the days of Boy George and when Ozzy Osbourne was best known as a singer. But the vast majority of the strips ring very true today as they deal with the absurdities of the human animal.A word about the format: Bloom County in it's original form included both the standard "3 panel" strips that appear in your... Read more

This is the first collection of Bloom County cartoons and a great place to start enjoying the fun. Bloom County is a fictional place populated with as eclectic a group of characters as you will find anywhere. Eccentric humans, a talking penguin, and Bill the Cat take on the societal follies of the early eighties with a humorous point of view. See the Rolling Stones perform for an elementary school dance. Go back to a time when Three Mile Island was in the news and Princess Diana was expecting her first child. Even if the events are distant memories, the humor is timeless.