Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things

Bloom County was one of the greatest comic strips ever to have existed, and possibly the best comic in the whole decade of the 1980's and that was when Calvin and Hobbs (by Bill Watterson) and The Far Side (by Gary Larson) were in their prime. The best comic strips today are Scott Adams' Dilbert (which jumped the Shark a few years back, but still have good moments), Get Fuzzy (by Darby Conley) and a few online comics, most notably User Friendly (by Illiad) and Sinfest (by Tatsuya Ishid). See www.userfriendly.org and www.sinfest.net for some good stuff. Bloom County dealt with political and social issues in original and novel ways. He didn't shy away from issues, and always dealt with things in a nice and funny way. Lovable Opus the Penguin became the soul of the strip. The plush Opus dolls I still own to this day are some of my favorite possessions. Yes, it does look a lot like Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. But Breathed was not copying it, but satirizing it and paying homage to it at the same time. Especially the way Milo Bloom played when compared to the Doonesbury's Uncle Duke... who Trudeau was just spoofing off from the real life Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (author who is most famous for his quasi-novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas").However, my favorite character was Oliver Wendell Holmes, the young computer hacker who fought apartite in South Africa through his invention, which was going to turn all the white people in South Africa black. Then there was the time he basically brought down Western Civilization as we knew it when he hacked into the New York Stock Exchange and put "A vast Ye mattes, Bank of America's about to go belly up" across the ticker. He got a well deserved spanking for that. Most important to me, however, Bloom County forms one of the great memories I have from High School. Reading Bloom County and talking about it with friends was something I really have fond memories of from that time. Maybe it was just something from youth that maybe you remember as a little better than it really was. Things like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams and the Night Court TV series seem that way to me now. Heck, I find much of Night Court to now be unwatchable. But Bloom County still seems to be very much readable to me. The 1980's in most ways basically stunk. But there were some minor high points to civilization as we knew it, and Bloom County was one of them. This book was probably the best of the regular collections. It is good that I now hear that Breathed may be restarting Bloom County again.

I love the "Bloom County" seiries - the deranged goings on of various animals and humans, Steve Dallas the lawyer, Opus and of course, Bill the Cat. Mr Breathed's humor is right on target and very funny.I recommend this book highly

Although perhaps not the best introduction to the characters of Bloom County, this book will please fans of Opus, Steve Dallas and the rest.Opus heads off to the South Pole, Steve Dallas becomes a sex gargoyle but still doesn't get the girl and the 'roaches continue to cause trouble.Despite it's vintage, Bloom County continues to appeal and it looks just as good from both sides of the Atlantic.

In my opinion, this book contains the absolute height of Bloom County's nine-year existence. The complete "Bill & Opus '84" continuity (that made the strip famous) is included here, as is Opus's typically calamatious *first* search for his long-lost mother. From Steve Dallas becoming "Mister America", to Opus entering the magical kingdom of Michael Jackson, to Oliver Wendell Jones's adventures in hacking, this book has it all. Highly recommended for anyone who was a fan of THE comic strip of the 1980's.

From a frazzled cat and a fat penguin running for office, to naked men in a dandy-lion patch, to a rare and hunted "Basselope," Berke Breathed throws the full effect of his odd name into "Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things". The result is a unique and extremely entertaining cast of characters in a charming and notable environment, "Bloom County."