Way better than Mr. Holland’s Opus
August 21st, 2010
Last night, I went to Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis to celebrate the release of Will’s new book, Fingerprints. It’s been years since I last visited the shop (at their old location just off Nicollet Mall), so I was happy to poke around and see what they had in stock.
A few Christmases ago, my sister gave me the complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes, bound in three hardcover books. I, admittedly, haven’t sat down to page through them all yet, but it is one of my most cherished possessions, as I spent a lot of time reading that strip as a child. Reminded of this, a wave of curiosity poured over me, and I started searching for a similar series of books for Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. And guess what? IT EXISTS.
More accurately, it sort of exists. The Complete Bloom County Library is a five-book collection of the complete chronological run of the strip. The publisher, IDW Publishing, started releasing installments of the collection last October, and thus far, has only published the first two books, covering the first 4 years of the strip. Volume 3 is scheduled to be released on November 2, 2010.
What great news! Bloom County was my second-favorite comic strip when I was growing up, but I read it much less religiously than Calvin & Hobbes. As such, the series feels much newer, and I “get” the jokes much better this time around (I was 2 when the strip first debuted, and likely didn’t start 1986 or so…certainly I was much more familiar with the series spin-offs, Outland and Opus).
Oh, the glories of adulthood!
