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94-489: Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America , where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk. On July 12, 2015, Breathed started drawing Bloom County again. The first revived strip

188-552: A syndicate hires people to write and draw a strip and then distributes it to many newspapers for a fee. Some newspaper strips begin or remain exclusive to one newspaper. For example, the Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly originally appeared only in the New York Star in 1948 and was not picked up for syndication until the following year. Newspaper comic strips come in two different types: daily strips and Sunday strips . In

282-428: A "standard" size", with strips running the entire width of a page or having more than one tier. By the 1920s, strips often covered six of the eight columns occupied by a traditional broadsheet paper. During the 1940s, strips were reduced to four columns wide (with a "transition" width of five columns). As newspapers became narrower beginning in the 1970s, strips have gotten even smaller, often being just three columns wide,

376-531: A children's Christmas book entitled A Wish for Wings That Work . The story revolved around Opus and included several Outland characters (although the Outland itself was not explicitly referenced in the story). It was made into an animated television movie that same year. Finally, on March 26, 1995, Breathed decided to end the strip and retire from cartooning. At the strip's end, Steve Dallas came out as gay , and eloped to California with Mark Slackmeyer from

470-513: A comics artist, known as a cartoonist . As the word "comic" implies, strips are frequently humorous. Examples of these gag-a-day strips are Blondie , Bringing Up Father , Marmaduke , and Pearls Before Swine . In the late 1920s, comic strips expanded from their mirthful origins to feature adventure stories , as seen in Popeye , Captain Easy , Buck Rogers , Tarzan , and Terry and

564-514: A few aspects of the strip bearing more than a passing resemblance to important Bloom County features (including at least a couple of artistic similarities), and an episode of the animated series wherein the character Uncle Ruckus calls Breathed "Master Penguin Draw'er". The series was adapted into the 1991 animated Christmas special entitled A Wish for Wings That Work , which is now available on DVD. The fictional setting of Bloom County served as

658-587: A flock of geese (without anybody mourning their demise). Max and Moritz provided an inspiration for German immigrant Rudolph Dirks , who created the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897—a strip starring two German-American boys visually modelled on Max and Moritz . Familiar comic-strip iconography such as stars for pain, sawing logs for snoring, speech balloons, and thought balloons originated in Dirks' strip. Hugely popular, Katzenjammer Kids occasioned one of

752-430: A full page, and daily strips were generally the width of the page. The competition between papers for having more cartoons than the rest from the mid-1920s, the growth of large-scale newspaper advertising during most of the thirties, paper rationing during World War II , the decline on news readership (as television newscasts began to be more common) and inflation (which has caused higher printing costs) beginning during

846-538: A high contrast photo within the strip, is modeled after the Linsay House located at 935 East College Street. Another Iowa City landmark, The Prairie Lights Bookstore, was referred to in the strip as the "Prairie Lights Newsstand"; original Bloom County artwork from Breathed now hangs in the bookstore. Another original Bloom County strip hangs in the Iowa City Public Library . Breathed used

940-464: A month after retiring Bloom County , Breathed began his second syndicated strip with a minor character from the previous strip. Ronald-Ann Smith, a little girl from the "wrong side of the tracks" in Bloom County, entering a magic doorway in a grimy alley that looked down into a cheery world of "cotton-candy trees" known as the Outland (the ground of her world did not align with that of Outland, so

1034-419: A recurring backdrop for the comic and its sequels, although the nature of the setting was frequently altered. In the comics, the county is presented as a stereotypical American midwestern small town. The small town setting was frequently contrasted with the increasing globalization taking place in the rest of the world; though Bloom County contained the likes of farmers and wilderness creatures by default, it

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1128-488: A secondary strip by the same artist as the main strip. No matter whether it appeared above or below a main strip, the extra strip was known as the topper , such as The Squirrel Cage which ran along with Room and Board , both drawn by Gene Ahern . During the 1930s, the original art for a Sunday strip was usually drawn quite large. For example, in 1930, Russ Westover drew his Tillie the Toiler Sunday page at

1222-493: A similar width to the one most daily panels occupied before the 1940s. In an issue related to size limitations, Sunday comics are often bound to rigid formats that allow their panels to be rearranged in several different ways while remaining readable. Such formats usually include throwaway panels at the beginning, which some newspapers will omit for space. As a result, cartoonists have less incentive to put great efforts into these panels. Garfield and Mutts were known during

1316-506: A single panel with a single gag, as seen occasionally in Mike Peters ' Mother Goose and Grimm . Early daily strips were large, often running the entire width of the newspaper, and were sometimes three or more inches high. Initially, a newspaper page included only a single daily strip, usually either at the top or the bottom of the page. By the 1920s, many newspapers had a comics page on which many strips were collected together. During

1410-574: A size of 17" × 37". In 1937, the cartoonist Dudley Fisher launched the innovative Right Around Home , drawn as a huge single panel filling an entire Sunday page. Full-page strips were eventually replaced by strips half that size. Strips such as The Phantom and Terry and the Pirates began appearing in a format of two strips to a page in full-size newspapers, such as the New Orleans Times Picayune , or with one strip on

1504-504: A small town. Breathed said he made the choice because he had followed a girlfriend to Iowa City , Iowa ; Breathed commented, "You draw—literally—from your life if you’re going to write anything with some juice to it. I did just that." Breathed's hand-printed signature on his strips was usually presented in mirror image, i.e. right to left. Breathed's award of the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning in 1987 for Bloom County

1598-429: A sparkling symptom of a renewed national ridiculousness. We're back baby. Breathed originally had no plans of publishing the new strips outside of his Facebook page, commenting that “Newspapers need deadlines, alas. Like my departed friend Douglas Adams used to say, the only part of deadlines I enjoyed was the whooshing sound as they sped by.” An archive of the new strips has started at GoComics since then. A new book

1692-496: A tabloid page, as in the Chicago Sun-Times . When Sunday strips began to appear in more than one format, it became necessary for the cartoonist to allow for rearranged, cropped or dropped panels. During World War II , because of paper shortages, the size of Sunday strips began to shrink. After the war, strips continued to get smaller and smaller because of increased paper and printing costs. The last full-page comic strip

1786-554: A two-tier daily strip, Star Hawks , but after a few years, Star Hawks dropped down to a single tier. In Flanders , the two-tier strip is the standard publication style of most daily strips like Spike and Suzy and Nero . They appear Monday through Saturday; until 2003 there were no Sunday papers in Flanders. In the last decades, they have switched from black and white to color. Single panels usually, but not always, are not broken up and lack continuity. The daily Peanuts

1880-507: A wide range of colors. Printing plates were created with four or more colors—traditionally, the CMYK color model : cyan, magenta, yellow and "K" for black. With a screen of tiny dots on each printing plate, the dots allowed an image to be printed in a halftone that appears to the eye in different gradations. The semi-opaque property of ink allows halftone dots of different colors to create an optical effect of full-color imagery. The decade of

1974-508: Is a strip, and the daily Dennis the Menace is a single panel. J. R. Williams ' long-run Out Our Way continued as a daily panel even after it expanded into a Sunday strip, Out Our Way with the Willets . Jimmy Hatlo 's They'll Do It Every Time was often displayed in a two-panel format with the first panel showing some deceptive, pretentious, unwitting or scheming human behavior and

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2068-537: Is being " bussed in " to the strip as part of a court order. Once Bloom County characters are scattered, only Opus is left as part of a plot to transition to Breathed's next strip in Bloom County' s final week. Shortly after Bloom County ended, Breathed started a Sunday-only strip called Outland with original characters and situations introduced in Bloom County' s final days. However, Opus, Bill and other characters eventually reappeared and slowly took over

2162-402: Is just 94 miles from Bloom County". Geographically, this would place Bloom County in either Iowa or the far north-central tier of counties of Missouri , but likely referring to the distance from Iowa City , where the strip was produced, to Des Moines (see § Real-world references below) . Also, in a Sunday strip with L.H. Puttgrass, he is holding a King Soopers bag, which would place

2256-488: Is quickly fired from both jobs; Michael Binkley becomes a wild boar skinner for Prince Valiant . Lola Granola says that she has been invited to pose for Playboy , which Opus dislikes. Milo Bloom is seen with a snake swallowing him head first and informing Opus he would be appearing Tuesdays in The Far Side . Oliver Wendell Jones is seen with the distinct features of Family Circus characters. He informs Opus he

2350-626: The Lansing State Journal in two sheets, printed much larger than the final version and ready to be cut apart and fitted into the local comics page." Comic strip historian Allan Holtz described how strips were provided as mats (the plastic or cardboard trays in which molten metal is poured to make plates) or even plates ready to be put directly on the printing press. He also notes that with electronic means of distribution becoming more prevalent printed sheets "are definitely on their way out." NEA Syndicate experimented briefly with

2444-657: The Flossy Frills series on The American Weekly Sunday newspaper supplement . In the UK and the rest of Europe, comic strips are also serialized in comic book magazines , with a strip's story sometimes continuing over three pages. Storytelling using a sequence of pictures has existed through history. One medieval European example in textile form is the Bayeux Tapestry . Printed examples emerged in 19th-century Germany and in mid 18th-century England, where some of

2538-549: The Internet . Many are exclusively published online, but the majority of traditional newspaper comic strips have some Internet presence. King Features Syndicate and other syndicates often provide archives of recent strips on their websites. Some, such as Scott Adams , creator of Dilbert , include an email address in each strip. Most comic strip characters do not age throughout the strip's life, but in some strips, like Lynn Johnston 's award-winning For Better or For Worse ,

2632-513: The University of Texas . The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of The Washington Post , who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County , syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group , made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Cutter John . Breathed set Bloom County in

2726-422: The call letters KRNA to refer to Bloom County' s rock radio station featuring "Rockin' Charmin' Harmin". The call letters belong to an actual Iowa City rock station which featured a disc jockey named "Charmin'" Jeff Harmon in the 1980s. Several Iowa City local news items also directly inspired Bloom County storylines. For example, a fictional Ronald Reagan sexist gaffe, referring to women as "little dumplin's",

2820-546: The editorial or op-ed page rather than the comics page because of their regular political commentary. For example, the August 12, 1974 Doonesbury strip was awarded a 1975 Pulitzer Prize for its depiction of the Watergate scandal . Dilbert is sometimes found in the business section of a newspaper instead of the comics page because of the strip's commentary about office politics , and Tank McNamara often appears on

2914-935: The miniatures written on scrolls coming out of their mouths—which makes them to some extent ancestors of the modern cartoon strips. In China, with its traditions of block printing and of the incorporation of text with image, experiments with what became lianhuanhua date back to 1884. The origin of the modern English language comic strip can be traced to the efflorescence of caricature in late 18th century London. English caricaturists such as Richard Newton and George Woodward developed sophisticated caricature styles using strips of expressive comic figures with captions that could be read left to right to cumulative effect, as well as business models for advertising and selling cheap comic illustration on regular subscription. Other leading British caricaturists produced strips as well; for example James Gillray in Democracy;-or-a Sketch of

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3008-536: The newspaper war (1887 onwards) between Pulitzer and Hearst . The Little Bears (1893–96) was the first American comic strip with recurring characters, while the first color comic supplement was published by the Chicago Inter-Ocean sometime in the latter half of 1892, followed by the New York Journal ' s first color Sunday comic pages in 1897. On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced

3102-441: The 1920s the medium became wildly popular. While radio, and later, television surpassed newspapers as a means of entertainment, most comic strip characters were widely recognizable until the 1980s, and the "funny pages" were often arranged in a way they appeared at the front of Sunday editions. In 1931, George Gallup's first poll had the comic section as the most important part of the newspaper, with additional surveys pointing out that

3196-458: The 1930s, the original art for a daily strip could be drawn as large as 25 inches wide by six inches high. Over decades, the size of daily strips became smaller and smaller, until by 2000, four standard daily strips could fit in an area once occupied by a single daily strip. As strips have become smaller, the number of panels have been reduced. Proof sheets were the means by which syndicates provided newspapers with black-and-white line art for

3290-1055: The 1960s saw the rise of underground newspapers , which often carried comic strips, such as Fritz the Cat and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers . Zippy the Pinhead initially appeared in underground publications in the 1970s before being syndicated. Bloom County and Doonesbury began as strips in college newspapers under different titles, and later moved to national syndication. Underground comic strips covered subjects that are usually taboo in newspaper strips, such as sex and drugs. Many underground artists, notably Vaughn Bode , Dan O'Neill , Gilbert Shelton , and Art Spiegelman went on to draw comic strips for magazines such as Playboy , National Lampoon , and Pete Millar's CARtoons . Jay Lynch graduated from undergrounds to alternative weekly newspapers to Mad and children's books. Webcomics , also known as online comics and internet comics , are comics that are available to read on

3384-413: The 1970s had been waning as an entertainment form. From 1903 to 1905 Gustave Verbeek , wrote his comic series "The UpsideDowns of Old Man Muffaroo and Little Lady Lovekins". These comics were made in such a way that one could read the 6 panel comic, flip the book and keep reading. He made 64 such comics in total. The longest-running American comic strips are: Most newspaper comic strips are syndicated;

3478-474: The 1997 Switcheroonie was a one-time publicity stunt, an artist taking over a feature from its originator is an old tradition in newspaper cartooning (as it is in the comic book industry). In fact, the practice has made possible the longevity of the genre's more popular strips. Examples include Little Orphan Annie (drawn and plotted by Harold Gray from 1924 to 1944 and thereafter by a succession of artists including Leonard Starr and Andrew Pepoy ), and Terry and

3572-583: The Bloom boarding house run by the grandparents of Milo Bloom. As the strip continued, various boarders (and/or pets) moved into the boarding house. In the order the characters debuted: For detailed summaries of all storylines, see the entries for the individual books. Breathed decided to end the strip in 1989. In keeping with the continuity of the Bill the Cat/Donald Trump storyline, Trump "buys out"

3666-481: The British magazine Judy by writer and fledgling artist Charles H. Ross in 1867, Ally Sloper is one of the earliest comic strip characters and he is regarded as the first recurring character in comics. The highly popular character was spun off into his own comic, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday , in 1884. While in the early 20th century comic strips were a frequent target for detractors of "yellow journalism", by

3760-484: The Cockroach , Steve Dallas , Oliver Wendell Jones , and Michael Binkley , became major players in the strip. Some characters, such as Cutter John , made an occasional guest appearance. A few prominent members of Bloom County , such as Milo Bloom , did not make an active appearance at all (though Milo did appear in the second-to-last installment of Outland , as a background extra on a bus). In 1991, Breathed wrote

3854-804: The Life of Buonaparte . His contemporary Thomas Rowlandson used strips as early as 1784 for example in The Loves of the Fox and the Badger . Rowlandson may also be credited with inventing the first internationally recognized comic strip character: Doctor Syntax whose picaresque journeys through England were told through a series of comic etchings, accompanied by verse. Original published in parts between 1809 and 1811 in Rudolf Ackermann 's Poetical Magazine , in book form The Tour of Doctor Syntax in search of

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3948-859: The NCS, enthusiastically promote the medium, which since the 1970s (and particularly the 1990s) has been considered to be in decline due to numerous factors such as changing tastes in humor and entertainment, the waning relevance of newspapers in general and the loss of most foreign markets outside English-speaking countries. One particularly humorous example of such promotional efforts is the Great Comic Strip Switcheroonie , held in 1997 on April Fool's Day, an event in which dozens of prominent artists took over each other's strips. Garfield ' s Jim Davis, for example, switched with Blondie ' s Stan Drake, while Scott Adams ( Dilbert ) traded strips with Bil Keane ( The Family Circus ). While

4042-464: The Penguin returned in the strip's third installment, and Bill the Cat appeared months after that. Before long, the premise of another world beyond a magic door had been lost completely. Breathed wrote that the strip became " Bloom County without the continuing narrative that a daily appearance allows" in the first Outland book collection. Other characters from Bloom County , such as Milquetoast

4136-402: The Pirates . In the 1940s, soap-opera -continuity strips such as Judge Parker and Mary Worth gained popularity. Because "comic" strips are not always funny, cartoonist Will Eisner has suggested that sequential art would be a better genre -neutral name. Comic strips have appeared inside American magazines such as Liberty and Boys' Life , but also on the front covers, such as

4230-490: The Pirates , started by Milton Caniff in 1934 and picked up by George Wunder . A business-driven variation has sometimes led to the same feature continuing under a different name. In one case, in the early 1940s, Don Flowers ' Modest Maidens was so admired by William Randolph Hearst that he lured Flowers away from the Associated Press and to King Features Syndicate by doubling the cartoonist's salary, and renamed

4324-490: The United States, a daily strip appears in newspapers on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays. Daily strips usually are printed in black and white, and Sunday strips are usually in color. However, a few newspapers have published daily strips in color, and some newspapers have published Sunday strips in black and white. Making his first appearance in

4418-561: The World ), some have verbal thoughts but are not understood by humans, ( Garfield , Snoopy in Peanuts ), and some can converse with humans ( Bloom County , Calvin and Hobbes , Mutts , Citizen Dog , Buckles , Get Fuzzy , Pearls Before Swine , and Pooch Cafe ). Other strips are centered entirely on animals, as in Pogo and Donald Duck . Gary Larson 's The Far Side

4512-685: The adventures of Winnie Winkle , Moon Mullins and Dondi , and waited each fall to see how Lucy would manage to trick Charlie Brown into trying to kick that football. (After I left for college, my father would clip out that strip each year and send it to me just to make sure I didn't miss it.)" The two conventional formats for newspaper comics are strips and single gag panels. The strips are usually displayed horizontally, wider than they are tall. Single panels are square, circular or taller than they are wide. Strips usually, but not always, are broken up into several smaller panels with continuity from panel to panel. A horizontal strip can also be used for

4606-623: The characters age as the years pass. The first strip to feature aging characters was Gasoline Alley . The history of comic strips also includes series that are not humorous, but tell an ongoing dramatic story. Examples include The Phantom , Prince Valiant , Dick Tracy , Mary Worth , Modesty Blaise , Little Orphan Annie , Flash Gordon , and Tarzan . Sometimes these are spin-offs from comic books , for example Superman , Batman , and The Amazing Spider-Man . A number of strips have featured animals as main characters. Some are non-verbal ( Marmaduke , The Angriest Dog in

4700-466: The characters. Hearst promptly hired Harold Knerr to draw his own version of the strip. Dirks renamed his version Hans and Fritz (later, The Captain and the Kids ). Thus, two versions distributed by rival syndicates graced the comics pages for decades. Dirks' version, eventually distributed by United Feature Syndicate , ran until 1979. In the United States, the great popularity of comics sprang from

4794-592: The comic in Colorado. On January 29, 2016, Berkeley Breathed posted on Facebook that "The Bloom County boarding house still sits in beautiful hayseedless Iowa City, home for this cartoonist for four years." The county was home to the Bloom Boarding House, Steve Dallas' law offices, the Bloom Beacon and Bloom Picayune newspapers, at least one pond, and Milo's Meadow. In the comic's later years,

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4888-640: The comic strip Doonesbury . Opus returned to Antarctica to live with his mother, whom he had finally located (some story arcs of the original comic Bloom County focused on his quest to find her). Eight years later, Breathed abandoned retirement and picked up where Outland had left off. The result was the Sunday-only reunion strip, Opus . Many Outland strips have never been reprinted in color, though all appeared in black & white in Comics Revue magazine. Outland strips also appeared in

4982-401: The comic strip and fires all of the cast. In the strip's final weeks the cast found new "jobs" with other comic strips. A "goodbye party" was held over the course of the week where characters talked about joining new strips. Portnoy and Hodge Podge get jobs as janitors behind the scenes at Marmaduke ; Steve Dallas joins the cast of Cathy and attempts to pitch himself as a new superhero, but

5076-594: The comic strips were the second most popular feature after the picture page. During the 1930s, many comic sections had between 12 and 16 pages, although in some cases, these had up to 24 pages. The popularity and accessibility of strips meant they were often clipped and saved; authors including John Updike and Ray Bradbury have written about their childhood collections of clipped strips. Often posted on bulletin boards , clipped strips had an ancillary form of distribution when they were faxed, photocopied or mailed. The Baltimore Sun ' s Linda White recalled, "I followed

5170-442: The comments on the picture if this was in response to Donald Trump 's presidential campaign; Breathed responded, "This creator can't precisely deny that the chap you mention had nothing to do with it." The next day, July 13, 2015, the first comic of the revived strip was officially posted online, also to Breathed's Facebook page. The strip was relaunched under the Bloom County 2015 title, only to be renamed simply as Bloom County at

5264-399: The content in each book. Breathed also said that he believes that, "I just closed my eyes and dropped a dart on the ones to be included." He felt relieved the publishers did not "have to ask ... to do this again." On October 25, 2017, IDW published Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat: 1980-1989 , collecting the complete run of Bloom County in two volumes. An "Ultimate Collectors Set"

5358-513: The county by way of a magical doorway. By Outland 's end, the Outland appeared to be a part of Bloom County itself. The final Outland strip listed the characters as living at "555 Hairybutt St., Bloom County, Outland". Opus also takes place in Bloom County. Breathed lived in Iowa City, Iowa during the early years of the strip, and the setting of Bloom County resembles Iowa City in several ways. The Bloom Boarding House, which appeared as

5452-427: The county contained what appeared to be a big-city ghetto ("the wrong side of the tracks", as it was known). The geographical profile of the county was fluid as the artistic style of the strip evolved. During most of Bloom County' s run, the rural meadow setting was presented realistically, while in its later years it became increasingly more abstract. The Outland setting of the strip was originally set apart from

5546-466: The door originally appears to be hovering in the sky above it). In its earliest form, Outland had been intended to be an experimental strip for Breathed, featuring a channel for creativity in the forms of new characters (such as Mortimer Mouse, based on the rejected name for Disney 's Mickey Mouse ) and bizarre backgrounds (many of which initially resembled those seen in Krazy Kat ). However, Opus

5640-525: The feature Glamor Girls to avoid legal action by the AP. The latter continued to publish Modest Maidens , drawn by Jay Allen in Flowers' style. As newspapers have declined , the changes have affected comic strips. Jeff Reece, lifestyle editor of The Florida Times-Union , wrote, "Comics are sort of the ' third rail ' of the newspaper." In the early decades of the 20th century, all Sunday comics received

5734-402: The fifties and sixties led to Sunday strips being published on smaller and more diverse formats. As newspapers have reduced the page count of Sunday comic sections since the late 1990s (by the 2010s, most sections have only four pages, with the back page not always being destined for comics) has also led to further downsizes. Daily strips have suffered as well. Before the mid-1910s, there was not

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5828-468: The first satirical or humorous sequential narrative drawings were produced. William Hogarth 's 18th-century English caricature include both narrative sequences, such as A Rake's Progress , and single panels. The Biblia pauperum ("Paupers' Bible"), a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the Late Middle Ages , sometimes depicted Biblical events with words spoken by the figures in

5922-400: The first comic-strip copyright ownership suits in the history of the medium. When Dirks left William Randolph Hearst for the promise of a better salary under Joseph Pulitzer , it was an unusual move, since cartoonists regularly deserted Pulitzer for Hearst. In a highly unusual court decision, Hearst retained the rights to the name "Katzenjammer Kids", while creator Dirks retained the rights to

6016-571: The history of London. The Reuben , named for cartoonist Rube Goldberg , is the most prestigious award for U.S. comic strip artists. Reuben awards are presented annually by the National Cartoonists Society (NCS). In 1995, the United States Postal Service issued a series of commemorative stamps, Comic Strip Classics , marking the comic-strip centennial. Today's strip artists, with the help of

6110-401: The late 1960s, it became a mouthpiece for Capp's repudiation of the counterculture. Pogo used animals to particularly devastating effect, caricaturing many prominent politicians of the day as animal denizens of Pogo's Okeefenokee Swamp. In a fearless move, Pogo's creator Walt Kelly took on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, caricaturing him as a bobcat named Simple J. Malarkey, a megalomaniac who

6204-403: The late 19th century. The Yellow Kid is usually credited as one of the first newspaper strips . However, the art form combining words and pictures developed gradually and there are many examples which led up to the comic strip. The Glasgow Looking Glass was the first mass-produced publication to tell stories using illustrations and is regarded as the world's first comic strip. It satirised

6298-505: The members with his drawings and the force of his personality. The comic strip was safe for satire. During the early 20th century, comic strips were widely associated with publisher William Randolph Hearst , whose papers had the largest circulation of strips in the United States. Hearst was notorious for his practice of yellow journalism , and he was frowned on by readers of The New York Times and other newspapers which featured few or no comic strips. Hearst's critics often assumed that all

6392-411: The mid-to-late 80s and 1990s respectively for their throwaways on their Sunday strips, however both strips now run "generic" title panels. Outland (comic strip) Outland is a comic strip written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed from 1989 until 1995 . It was a Sunday-only spin-off of Breathed's strip Bloom County , featuring many of the same characters. On September 3, 1989,

6486-462: The nation's first full daily comic page in his New York Evening Journal . The history of this newspaper rivalry and the rapid appearance of comic strips in most major American newspapers is discussed by Ian Gordon . Numerous events in newspaper comic strips have reverberated throughout society at large, though few of these events occurred in recent years, owing mainly to the declining use of continuous storylines on newspaper comic strips, which since

6580-685: The picturesque ran to 9 editions between 1812 and 1819, spun off two sequels, a prequel, numerous pirate imitations and copies including French, German, Danish and translations. His image was available on pottery, textiles wallpaper and other merchandise. The Caricature Magazine or Hudibrastic Mirror , an influential English comic series published in London between 1807 and 1819 by Thomas Tegg included some satirical stories in comic strip format such as The Adventures of Johnny Newcome . The first newspaper comic strips appeared in North America in

6674-615: The political and social life of Scotland in the 1820s. It was conceived and illustrated by William Heath. Swiss author and caricature artist Rodolphe Töpffer (Geneva, 1799–1846) is considered the father of the modern comic strips. His illustrated stories such as Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois (1827), first published in the US in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck or Histoire de Monsieur Jabot (1831), inspired subsequent generations of German and American comic artists. In 1865, German painter, author, and caricaturist Wilhelm Busch created

6768-439: The reproduction of strips (which they arranged to have colored in the case of Sunday strips). Michigan State University Comic Art Collection librarian Randy Scott describes these as "large sheets of paper on which newspaper comics have traditionally been distributed to subscribing newspapers. Typically each sheet will have either six daily strips of a given title or one Sunday strip. Thus, a week of Beetle Bailey would arrive at

6862-413: The second panel revealing the truth of the situation. Sunday newspapers traditionally included a special color section. Early Sunday strips (known colloquially as "the funny papers", shortened to "the funnies"), such as Thimble Theatre and Little Orphan Annie , filled an entire newspaper page, a format known to collectors as full page . Sunday pages during the 1930s and into the 1940s often carried

6956-504: The sports page because of its subject matter. Lynn Johnston 's For Better or For Worse created an uproar when Lawrence, one of the strip's supporting characters, came out of the closet. The world's longest comic strip is 88.9-metre (292 ft) long and on display at Trafalgar Square as part of the London Comedy Festival. The London Cartoon Strip was created by 15 of Britain's best known cartoonists and depicts

7050-405: The start of 2016. On the return of the strips Breathed stated: Deadlines and dead-tree media took the fun out of a daily craft that was only meant to be fun. I had planned to return to Bloom County in 2001, but the sullied air sucked the oxygen from my kind of whimsy. Bush and Cheney's fake war dropped it for a decade like a bullet to the head. But silliness suddenly seems safe now. Trump's merely

7144-468: The strip Max and Moritz , about two trouble-making boys, which had a direct influence on the American comic strip. Max and Moritz was a series of seven severely moralistic tales in the vein of German children's stories such as Struwwelpeter ("Shockheaded Peter"). In the story's final act, the boys, after perpetrating some mischief, are tossed into a sack of grain, run through a mill, and consumed by

7238-535: The strip have been released far more sporadically in recent years. In 2023, Breathed only created seven daily strips released between July 23rd and August 13th and has yet to release any at all for 2024. Starting from 2016, Breathed took on, with permission, the characters from Calvin and Hobbes in an occasional series of strips. Bloom County has had an influence on other cartoonists, particularly cartoonists who have an irreverent bent or tackle political topics in their work. For example, Scott Kurtz , creator of

7332-513: The strip, "Headlines" breaks to identify the top stories of the day, and commentary from Breathed. Each volume has three separate releases: a standard edition, a signed edition, and a signed, remarked edition. Breathed said that the reason why the strips printed in The Bloom County Library were not published in previous collections was that the publisher would not let Breathed publish 400 pages each year, so Breathed had to reduce

7426-430: The strip. Outland ran from September 3, 1989, to March 26, 1995. Another Sunday-only spinoff strip called Opus ran from November 23, 2003, to November 2, 2008. On July 12, 2015, Breathed posted to his Facebook page a photo with the caption "A return after 25 years. Feels like going home." The photo showed him drawing a comic strip with the title Bloom County 2015 with Opus pictured in the first frame. A fan asked in

7520-451: The strips in his papers were fronts for his own political and social views. Hearst did occasionally work with or pitch ideas to cartoonists, most notably his continued support of George Herriman 's Krazy Kat . An inspiration for Bill Watterson and other cartoonists, Krazy Kat gained a considerable following among intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s. Some comic strips, such as Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore , may be printed on

7614-497: The strips that preceded Loose Tails . All of the daily strips have been reprinted in Comics Revue magazine. IDW Publishing published The Bloom County Library , a five volume hardback collection of all Bloom County strips, beginning in October 2009. This series is part of their Library of American Comics series. It is a complete reprint of the strip, including side notes about cultural and political references made in

7708-505: The way for some of these strips, as its human characters were manifest in diverse forms—as animals, vegetables, and minerals. The comics have long held a distorted mirror to contemporary society, and almost from the beginning have been used for political or social commentary. This ranged from the conservative slant of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie to the unabashed liberalism of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury . Al Capp's Li'l Abner espoused liberal opinions for most of its run, but by

7802-404: The webcomic PvP , acknowledged Breathed's contributions at one point with a strip expressing the opinion that "so many webcomics. ..are nothing but Bloom County ripoffs", then lampooning itself by mimicking Breathed's art and dialogue style in the final panel. Aaron McGruder , creator of the comic and later animated series The Boondocks , has paid tribute to Breathed's work as well, with

7896-414: Was 39.43 N 105.01 W, which would place it just south of Denver, Colorado . In an early strip, Milo gives his address as "Box 163, Bloom County, N.I., 12460", the zip code for which would place it about 30 miles southwest of Albany, New York . Another strip has Opus trying to make airline reservations to Des Moines, Iowa . He balks at the outrageously high quoted price for a ticket stating that "Des Moines

7990-443: Was also released, including the original art from a daily strip featuring Opus, a page from Breathed's sketchbooks, and a personalized sketch of Opus on the slipcover. Bloom County: The Complete Library , published by The Library of American Comics , an imprint of IDW Publishing , between 2009 and 2012. Collects the complete Bloom County as well as Outland and Opus . Comic strip Most strips are written and drawn by

8084-411: Was announced The Simpsons writer Tim Long joined the series as showrunner. Like many other popular comic strips, Bloom County has been republished in various collections . By 2004, the comic strip was reprinted in 11 books, the first having been published in 1983 and the last in that year. None of the reprints contained complete runs of the strip, although Bloom County Babylon contained many of

8178-532: Was announced in June 2016; Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope was a compilation of strips from 2015 and 2016. Two more books followed in 2017 and 2018, respectively. No more books have been published since. On April 11, 2022, Breathed posted a new strip on Facebook labeled "Season 33, Episode 3" in the title panel. It featured Steve Dallas and Opus in a satire of the MeToo Movement. New installments of

8272-525: Was bent on taking over the characters' birdwatching club and rooting out all undesirables. Kelly also defended the medium against possible government regulation in the McCarthy era . At a time when comic books were coming under fire for supposed sexual, violent, and subversive content, Kelly feared the same would happen to comic strips. Going before the Congressional subcommittee, he proceeded to charm

8366-399: Was controversial. Because the cartoon appeared on the comics page, and not on the editorial page, the win was disapproved of by many members of Association of American Editorial Cartoonists . Breathed cited the controversy over the release of Go Set a Watchman as the factor that led him to resume Bloom County . At the very beginning of the strip (December 1980), the central setting was

8460-506: Was frequented by Hare Krishnas , feminists, and rock stars. While the location of Bloom County is never explicitly mentioned, there have been some clues in the strip. When Oliver Jones identified Bloom County as the place where Halley's Comet would crash into Earth, a sign was seen saying that it was at 35.05 N 146.55 E. This would place it in the Pacific Ocean, about 300 miles off the coast of Japan. Oliver's previous calculation

8554-494: Was lifted from University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry 's comment, infuriating feminists at the university. On February 15, 2022, Fox announced a Bloom County television series, with Berkeley Breathed as executive producer and co-writer. Bento Box will serve as the animation studio on the project. Fox's animation company, Bento Box Entertainment , Miramax , Spyglass Media Group and Project X Entertainment are all working on it as an animated series. In September 2022, it

8648-420: Was published via Facebook on July 13, 2015. Breathed won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987, making him only the second (and so far last) comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer; the other was Garry Trudeau , whose work has influenced Breathed. Bloom County originated from a comic strip known as The Academia Waltz , which Breathed produced for The Daily Texan , the student newspaper of

8742-722: Was the Prince Valiant strip for 11 April 1971. Comic strips have also been published in Sunday newspaper magazines. Russell Patterson and Carolyn Wells' New Adventures of Flossy Frills was a continuing strip series seen on Sunday magazine covers. Beginning January 26, 1941, it ran on the front covers of Hearst's American Weekly newspaper magazine supplement, continuing until March 30 of that year. Between 1939 and 1943, four different stories featuring Flossy appeared on American Weekly covers. Sunday comics sections employed offset color printing with multiple print runs imitating

8836-561: Was unusual, as there were no central characters. Instead The Far Side used a wide variety of characters including humans, monsters, aliens , chickens, cows, worms , amoebas , and more. John McPherson's Close to Home also uses this theme, though the characters are mostly restricted to humans and real-life situations. Wiley Miller not only mixes human, animal, and fantasy characters, but also does several different comic strip continuities under one umbrella title, Non Sequitur . Bob Thaves 's Frank & Ernest began in 1972 and paved

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