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NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER and WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD “For those of us who only knew what was going on in the 1980s thanks to Breathed, it's a time capsule; for fans of hilarious cartooning, it's a treasure trove.” —National Public Radio Presenting more than 600 sequential comic strips, many that have never before been collected, and picking up exactly where Volume Four left off. Breathed himself provides copious, insightful, and often hysterical commentary along the way.
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A PENGUIN’S LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT As the 1980s draw to a close, so does BLOOM COUNTY. This final volume follows Opus, Bill the Cat, Milo, Oliver, Steve Dallas, and the rest of Berkeley Breathed’s quirky and charismatic characters as they make their way— and at the very peak of their popularity—down the path to comic strip immortality.
“In a country underscored by 15-second celebrity and bizarre political twists, few fictional characters have channeled our collective out-of-control insecurities better than Opus, the beleaguered, lumpy-billed Everypenguin at the center of Berkeley Breathed's comic parallel universe Bloom County.” —USA TODAY
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LOOM COUNT B Y THE COMPLETE LIBRARY VOLUME FIVE: 1987–1989
BERKELEY BREATHED
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November 30 December 2, 1987
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December 3-5, 1987
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Mea culpa. We edited this strip for this collection. It’s sorta breaking one of our own rules about doing this…but then, I broke a much bigger rule when I wrote this originally: I gave Bill a voice. In its newsprint incarnation, Bill states his name here, correcting it from “Bert.” Nice beat, but wholly, shockingly out of character. Letting a joke override staying true to character is where so many movies go wrong. One of the pleasures of doing these volumes is correcting one’s own history. The Soviets enjoyed this for most of their history, why can’t I?—BB
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December 6, 1987
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Little inside joke here. My photography professor at the University of Texas was J.B. Colson. He looked precisely like this. One wonders what he thought upon viewing this. Think about it: One wakes up and sees oneself in the funny papers below Charlie Brown. Do you shrug and turn to the sports section or do you wonder if you’re having an LSD flashback?—BB
I hope you had better luck remembering who Peter Holm is/was than I did. He is, for sure, delicious testimony to the ephemeral nature of fame. He was a national punchline for a hiccup worth of time in 1987 for suing actress Joan Collins for more money when she annulled their marriage within seconds after the ceremony. Memorable, possibly, only because he was sort of a spearhead for the now vomitous spillage of momentarily famous dickheads that now flow across our cultural landscape. Not that I’m judging.—BB December 7-9, 1987
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December 10-12, 1987
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In 1986 President Reagan appointed Douglas Ginsburg to the Court of Appeals. In 1987 Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn after the candidates past marijuana usage became an issue. I drew Tipper Gore getting high while nude from the waist up on the Sunday morning funny pages. If you aren’t yet convinced that the eighties were the glory days of newspaper cartoons, you’re probably dead or too young to appreciate any of this nonsense.—BB
December 13, 1987
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December 14-16, 1987
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I think I was referring to my old friend Barry Manilow here. I may have mentioned that Barry sent me flowers after I nearly killed myself in a flying accident. We had a complicated relationship.—BB
December 17-19, 1987
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December 20, 1987
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