The Bloom County Library, Vol. 3: 1984-1986

Bloom County: The Complete Library #3

by Berkeley Breathed

-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

Genres: Comics, Humor, Comic Strips, Fiction, Graphic Novels, Comedy, Cartoon

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2010

About the author

Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director, and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip which dealt with socio-political issues as seen through the eyes of highly exaggerated characters (e.g. Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and humorous analogies.

Reviews

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Bloom County. I've been slowly picking up these collected editions over the last year or so, waiting for our local comic store to get remaindered versions in. At least, that's the way it had gone until a week or so ago, when I went in and found both the third and fourth available for $10 each, and then, a day later, the fifth! So now I have all of them, barring the Sunday comics collection. Woo!

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Milo is meh, Binkley is insufferable and the celebrity cameos are cringe. The best characters are Opus, Steve and the cat.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great collection of Breathed's middle years of his initial 10-year run of Bloom County. This one covers the '84 election and plenty of other seminal moments of 1980s politics and pop culture. And as with the other collections, it's amazing (and sometimes downright frightening) how much of the social commentary is still completely relevant, even over 30 years later.

This collection actually includes the first sets of strips that I hadn't previously seen, either during their original newspaper publication or in collected editions. I found myself laughing out loud every few pages, which is about all one can ask from a comic strip. Of course, Bloom County always offered so much more, and Vol. 3 gives you the substance and heart that made the strip one of the all-time greats.

[Davidg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best of these volumes. Sadly, Cutter John is missing for most of the book, presumed dead, so nothing from him and Bobbi, and not too many Star Trek jokes either. Even more sadly, Bill the Cat is resurrected. A one joke character, mocking the marketing of Garfield, that joke wears thin quickly.

Still, we have Opus and Binkley and the gang to entertain us.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid but not as great as I've always been led to believe. Most of the jokes land and the it's a fun group of characters to spend some time with.

[Seth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A joy to read. A favourite newspaper strip.

[Earl Truss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oliver Wendell Jones and Binkley's anxiety closet. This is the year when I really started liking Bloom County.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is finally entering the era of Bloom County that I love. All the adults save Steve Dallas and Cutter John to leave the kids and animals as the prime attraction. Opus front and center and a newly resurrected Bill the Cat becoming a much more fleshed out character. Lots of ongoing stories rather than mostly one off ideas. Great stuff.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately this look back at one of my favorite comics and small communities from childhood, didn't really carry the same weight 30+ years on

[Tankboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I own the original art for one of the strips in this collection, so maybe I’m biased, but this is just genius stuff!🙂

[Brian Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's as much in the groove on this one as he was in books 2 and 4, which is a stellar 6 year run on a strip that was obviously produced on such a constant adrenaline high chasing the last minute deadline. It's an amazing body of work and the cultural impact is undeniable.

It's noted that Calvin and Hobbes started appearing about midway through this volume, and those two strips formed the two poles of genius on the comics pages for the next 5 years. Everyone else was just playing catch-up.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some flat storylines that go on far too long. A lot of the humor is hack references and nothing clever. It feels like the fire of Volume 2 is gone. Far too many repetitions of jokes from earlier with no new spin.

This volume seems like the stale version of Volume 2. Many of the jokes from the earlier in the comic come back, but seem to simply repeat themselves, rather than adding a new spin (with the exception of p. 60). Many of the jokes hinge on referencing a celebrity, but not in the inventive ways the comic has done so before. (Simply inserting a celebrity name is not clever unto itself.) Many plot lines go on far too long without offering any big laughs: the Meadow Party, Bill the Cat joining a cult, or Oliver Wendell Jones’ new computer that walks around and worships the TV. Each of the aforementioned are ideas where the humorous commentary is clear, but doesn’t offer any big punchlines (with the exception of p. 93). Other plot lines are hack...like Opus assaulting a mime.

---
Standout strip:
p. 149 middle

[Katie]

1 - p. 14 (July 16-18, 1984) - B&W
2 - p. 16 (July 22, 1984) - color
3 - p. 21 (August 2-4, 1984) - B&W
4 - p. 91 (January 13, 1985) - color
5 - p. 257 (January 27, 1986) - color

Summary:
This sequential comic strip series highlights the poignant opinions of Bloom and his animal friends. Each strip is political in nature and seems to parallel the key events of the time period (Note: This assumption is based on my best knowledge and the most recent edition of this comic strip owned by my library. It ends several months before I was born.).

Visual Keywords:
- multi-panel
- sequential

Text Style:

Potential Readers:
- adults
- interested in politics

Awards:
- Pulitzer Prize

Other:
- It would be interesting to see more current cartoons from this series to see if I would be better able to understand the message. The use of animal characters did not make it any easier to understand the context.

[Carl Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the "Bloom County" collected comics is a welcome trip down memory lane. Volume 3 contains some fantastic storylines: the election of 1984, Opus and Cutter John's ill-fated balloon chair mission to the Washington, DC and Opus' crash-induced amnesia, Bill the Cat's reanimation, Betty Ford Center stint, and dalliance with Jeane Kirkpatrick. One of my all-time favorite Bloom County storylines is the relationship between Oliver Wendell Jones and his Banana Jr. 6000 computer, from the first blush of shiny new technology to final obsolescence. A Sunday strip features a fake advertisement advising parents to buy their children a personal computer or else they will join a heavy metal band, wear fishnets, and stick out their tongues all the way to their kneecaps--just like Gene Simmons, whose parents didn't get him a personal computer.

[Ubalstecha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, volume three takes us back to Bloom County, where penguins talk and cats spy for the Russians. In this volume we have the disappearance of Cutter and Opus while on a mission to turn the South African ambassador black. We also get the reemergence of Opus, this time with amnesia. Milo and the Meadow party are also there, as are Steve Dallas and his mother. What is missing is Ms. Harlow, the perky school teacher and Cutter's on again/off again beau. And I miss her.

Bloom County is considered a classic because cartoonist Breathed commented on the news and trends of the day. It is easy to see this as the bridge between Doonsbury and the Daily Show. Breathed's tongue is firmly in his cheek and he enjoys making fun of everyone involved, including himself and his characters.

A great collection.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloom County is on the upswing throughout this volume. So is the size of Opus's nose (which for my money was at its best in mid-2004) with the exception of the classic rhinoplasty storyline. Breathed mediates the strip's earlier bitchiness and enters his peak with hilarious, inventive, beautifully rendered stuff. A good starting place for new readers.

The annotations haven't improved much over the last couple of volumes though. The author's still griping away and still constantly pointing out things in the strip that editors wouldn't allow on the comic page anymore. That self-censorship could be either the cause or effect of the fact that the funny pages haven't been creatively or culturally relevant for decades, but it doesn't make hearing about it any more interesting.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I checked this out of the library a long time ago and started reading it. And just got stuck. I don't think Bloom County works reading it straight through all that well. It is interesting and funny. And sometimes even intellectually stimulating. And yet it is not all that compelling reading. And this contained quite a bit of my favorite character - Oliver Wendell Jones and the Banana Jr 6000. Unfortunately it also contained quite a bit of Bill the Cat who I never thought all that funny. Oh well, perhaps the next volume will be better.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loves me some Bloom County. This volume also has my favorite sequence where Opus and Cutter John crash land in the ocean while trying to cause trouble with the South African ambassador, Opus gets amnesia and thinks he was a man prior, and Bill the Cat turns out to be a Communist spy (after being a coked-out star and Rajneesh bagwan). Who knew?

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Bloom County at the height of its powers, from July 1984 to February 1986. Bill the Cat runs for President. Cutter John and Opus get lost in a flying wheelchair on a mission to zap the South African ambassador with a ray that turns him black, invented by Oliver Wendell Jones. Binkley's anxiety closet. Milo at the newspaper. Steve Dallas's mom. All sorts of fun stuff.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The strip continues in great form for this period, which marks the midpoint of its life. As the author remarks in a number of the occasional notes appended to the strips, it was a much looser era back then in terms of what you could get away with in a strip running in a family newspaper and he took full advantage of it with genuinely funny results.

[Mark Bult · Rating 5 out of 5]

These first six or seven years of Bloom County were just awesome, containing classics from my childhood that I’ll never forget. Looking back through each and ever daily strip, though, also reminded me of some I’d completely forgotten about, plus the first book let me see the early strips I missed, before my local papers had syndicated the comic.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's interesting to see what strips I remember from the original volumes, what strips they hadn't previously collected, and what strips I have a different view on now that I have a bit more understanding of politics (at least more so that I did as a 12 year old).

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood or what, but I didn't find myself laughing all that frequently reading this volume. There's some funny stuff, but Breathed seems to have settled into something of a glib, superficial pattern by this point.

[Keith Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's really surprising how many comics have never been reprinted before. Remains very funny.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it, yet in some undefinable way felt it was overall not quite as perfectly great as the first two volumes.

[Laura Lemay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in the collected series, I found these strips more political and less charming than the previous books. Fewer really good laughs here, but still worth it.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as I remembered it. Better, actually; even as a little dork, plenty of jokes went over my head at the time.

[Rob Hermanowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathed's wonderful '80's comic really hits new heights with this volume, and contains several strips that were so good I distinctly remember them from my first reading them in the newspaper!

[Frank Taranto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny,sick humor. Bloom County picked on everybody and made me laugh while doing so. Still does.