Re. Bloom County , I always thought Bill the Cat (“Gag! Choke!”) started as the anti-Garfield, a reproach to all the cute-animal merchandising that was metastisizing at the time. Strawberry Shortcake, for example, was a deliberate attempt (there was an article in the New York Times by a toy company to create, sell and promote dolls of a “beloved character” no one had ever heard of before, and increase profits by cutting out royalties paid to the messy creators of beloved characters. It didn’t matter how appalling Bill’s behavior was, he was lionized by Hollywood, New York and Washington so long as he grabbed the latest zeitgeist (remember when he went from death-metal musician to neo-conservative and was romantically involved with Jeanne Kirkpatrick?)

[...] (via Comics Worth Reading.) [...]

He always looked to me as though he was drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Bill, it’s great to hear that someone who’s read so much of it is still planning to get the new series… that’s quite a recommendation for it.

I’ve got most (but not all) of the Fantagraphics trades, some of the Dell Comics plus something like twenty-five of the Simon & Schuster collections – I’m definitely hyped about this complete hardbound collection . . .

Can’t express the happiness that this one is feeling.

Speaking of old strips, any experts out there think there’s any chance in hell that SAM’S STRIP will ever get collected? Wouldn’t that make a great “done-in-one” volume?

I think Bloom County has aged dreadfully. Or maybe *I’ve* aged dreadfully. Looking back on them now, I realize that Breathed didn’t even bother trying to be funny most of the time–and usually succeeded. Sub-sub-Doonesbury even on its best day. And I say that as someone who was a huge fan in the 80s*, who clipped Bloom County out of the newspaper every day, who owned Bill the Cat t-shirts, etc. In fact, the bulk of Bloom County is just as painful, ugly, shrill and humorless as most of my memories of the 1980s, which makes it a perfect time capsule.

And Augie, can’t we safely assume that the Dick Tracy series will *always* have those design elements, to keep the books consistent on the shelf? Once they made the decision to rip off Seth, they were kind of stuck with it.

*Likely only because Bloom County’s broad, sloppy social satire was easy for me to understand as a 15-year-old, whereas Doonesbury still left me scratching my head at the political references half of the time.

(And there are strips for which this will not hold true for; I don’t think anyone can really understand the enthusiasm for B.C. in its early days by reading the later material; after years of grazing over B.C. in the newspaper and such, reading the earliest of the book collections of the strip came as a real surprise. And then there are strips like Calvin And Hobbes, which evolved much less than Pogo or Peanuts; if you don’t like the first year of C&H, you’re not likely to like the last, I reckon.)

It’s a shame that the Eclipse Pogo reprint series, which reprinted not the strip but the comic book material, never made it to the later work in that format. I hope that if the Fantagraphics series is successful, that will provide sufficient incentive for the comic book material to get collected.

And DICK TRACY Volume 2 has the same design elements, still, it should be noted.

I would dearly love to see Barnaby, as well; but I only know it by reputation. I want to see some before I know if I want a full set.

I love that we’re getting complete collections of so many comics these days. I didn’t need to list several because they already exist or are in the works.