Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things

"Fans have pestered me for years,” said Berkeley Breathed, “for this ultimate Bloom County collection in that polite, respectful badgering way that only fans can manage. Thank God I can now tell them something better than just 'please remove your tent from my lawn.' I can say, 'It's coming!"

With that, it was announced that IDW Publishing will publish The Bloom County Library, five volumes that will each collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. But wait, you say, don't I already have all those comics? Not so. This will be the very first time that many of these strips have been collected. Cool.

I was a bit of a fan. In my final high school yearbook, listed under Future, it says Bloom County. That was the same year I wrote my English independent study (for an extremely indulgent teacher) comparing Northrop Fry's theory on satire from Anatomy of Criticism to examples from Bloom County. It was The Simpsons for me before there was The Simpsons.

And when Breathed walked away on August 6th, 1989, I was crushed. I followed Outland for awhile, but it was never the same. I didn't even realize until this year there was a recent Opus comic, now also departed, until I read my friend Nikki's heartfelt remembrance of the strip.

So we'll get one more go around with Opus, Bill the Cat, Steve Dallas, Milo Bloom and the rest. I can't wait to see them all again.

Photo above: Bloom County's Billy and the Boingers (aka Deathtöngue) and their parody of U2's Joshua Tree.

Link via Topless Robot