Older readers may remember the excellent comic strip Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed that featured a bunch of zany adults, children, and animals and touched on all manner of topics and political commentary in the manner of Doonesbury. It ran from 1980 until 1989 when he retired the strip. He continued with a spin-off, a Sunday only strip called Outland that ran until 1995. After that ended, he started a new Sunday only strip Opus in 2003 featuring the beloved penguin of that name. That ended in 2008.
But apparently the opportunity for satire presented by the current Republican presidential race and Donald Trump was too much for Breathed to resist and on July 13, he announced that he was starting a new strip called Bloom County 2015 and bringing back most of the original cast of characters.
You can see a recent strip where Opus, who has been asleep for 25 years, tries to come to terms with the world today.
To follow the new strip, you can go Breathed’s Facebook page where the first of the new strips starts on July 13.
I always preferred Bloom County’s humour and allusion to Doonesbury’s direct attack on events. The humour in Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes were similar in their surrealism, though I don’t know if Watterson was influenced by Breathed who came first. The two artists were in regular contact with one another at one time.
How interesting that the strip mentions Harper Lee, and her second book appears in 2015.
http://mentalfloss.com/us/go/66473
That’s interesting. I had not been aware of the influence. Thanks!
Thanks, Mano.