Eric Bangeman

Eric Bangeman

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

Berkeley Breathed

When Bloom County appeared for the first time in the Rocky Mountain News in December 1980, 13-year-old me immediately took notice. The style and characters were reminiscent of Doonesbury (Bloom County author Berkeley Breathed has acknowledged the influence of Garry Trudeau’s comic), but it was fresh, goofy, and, most of the time, hilarious. Not only was Breathed’s artistic ability obvious even when compressed into a few square inches of newsprint, it also stood out from the likes of B.C., Wizard of ID, Blondie, and other comic-page stalwarts for its sharp and satirical humor. Every character Breathed introduced quickly found a home in Bloom County‘s twisted little world, especially Bill the Cat, who was introduced to satirize Jim Davis’ continuous attempts to pump out Garfield merchandise.

The strip had a great run until Breathed discontinued it in August 1989, much to the disappointment of his millions of fans. Breathed was the first artist to walk away from a popular comic strip while it was still fresh and funny, and perhaps he set an example for Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Gary Larson (The Far Side) to follow, as they unexpectedly wrapped up their comics in 1995.

Breathed didn’t completely give up comics, moving on to the short-lived, Sunday-only Outland, which featured an all-new cast, aside from Bill the Cat and Opus the penguin. Outland ended in 1995, and we wouldn’t see any other comics from Breathed until the launch of Opus, which that ran every Sunday from 2003 to 2008. Breathed has been absent from the world of comics since then, but that unexpectedly and happily changed in July 2015 when the first all-new Bloom County comic in over two-and-a-half decades appeared on Facebook.

Times have changed since Bloom‘s heyday of the 1980s. The Internet has made it possible for talented artists around the world to make anyone anywhere laugh. I’ve bookmarked over 20 webcomics, and I visit them daily. And the newest incarnation of Bloom County is by no means the first online comic to make the transition from the Web to print; I own the first three volumes of Questionable Content as well as Allie Brosh’s collection of Hyperbole and a Half comics.

In addition to making comics more accessible, the Internet also excels as a medium for geek nostalgia. I’ve spent hours flipping through the Bloom County archives on comics.com, and, like other fans, I was overjoyed when new strips began appearing (mostly) daily on Facebook (the strip has over 650,000 likes as of today.) Earlier this year, Breathed announced Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope on his personal website, the first printed collection of new Bloom County material in nearly 30 years. Due in bookstores as a paperback on September 13, my special-edition hardcover (and autographed!) copy arrived last week.

If you’re a fan of the old Bloom County but haven’t been keeping up with the new Bloom County, it will be instantly familiar. The strip still focuses on the same characters (Steve Dallas and Cutter John included) with the same personalities and character flaws. Breathed’s art and writing are still spot-on. Some of his targets have changed (people who can’t look up from their smartphones, for one), but he also lampoons many of the same targets from Bloom‘s halcyon days. (Hello, Donald Trump!)

An actual book of actual online comic strips

The cover of the gorgeous hardcover shows the USS Enterpoop in action, piloted by Cutter John and crewed by Opus, Bill the Cat, and others. Inside are the first 173 strips to run on Facebook since Bloom‘s resurrection. Leafing through it transported me back to 1983, when I came home from the bookstore with Loose Tails, the first Bloom collection.

While seeing one of the greatest comics of all time in book form is great, the best part of Episode XI might be the forward. Dubbed “The Fifth Element,” Breathed talks about why he gave up the daily comic in 1989 and why he brought it back again. “I wouldn’t have quit 26 years go if something hadn’t been amiss,” he begins. “In those olden days, popular newspaper comics earned millions a year.”

As he describes 1989, something was off. The constant stress of (and costs incurred by) missed deadlines contributed to this feeling of wrongness, but there was more. “Why couldn’t I execute the comic strips in anything but a frenzy of weekly, rushed, and woefully late panic... I wasn’t sure, but I very much suspected that whatever it was, it was identical to the magic, unnamed fifth element that had flown from both Gary Larson’s creative id as well as Bill Watterson’s.”

Breathed goes on to talk about how his correspondence with Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame—and the appearance of what he calls her “exploratory practice notes” brought to press by her “villainous publisher”—got him thinking once again about what was missing for him. Her passing spurred him to return to his strip. He writes:

I mourned Miss Lee and her vanished world. And then thought about my own. Rare, these: worlds and characters that are more alive for one’s readers than they are for their creator. We who stumble upon them are the Blessed Ones... not so much clever as maybe just plain lucky. We shouldn’t walk away too easily... She let her created universe die. Yet she demanded mine to keep going. She ran out of time. I had some.

If you’ve been following Bloom County since it first reappeared in July 2015, there is little in Episode XI aside from the introduction you haven’t seen online already. (In addition to appearing on Facebook, the strip also runs on a three-day delay on comics.com). In the basest capitalistic sense of the term, there is very little “value” in buying this or any other online comic. But that’s not why we purchase comic collections. We do it in no small part for the escape they offer. Cracking open Episode XI took me back a couple of decades, where I could lay on my bed and laugh at the naivety of Opus, the chauvinism of Steve Dallas, and the unblinking devotion to science of Oliver Wendell Jones. And that’s worth every cent.

Listing image by Eric Bangeman