Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 (Bloom County Library)
When Bloom County first hit the comics pages in 1980, it was widely dismissed as a Doonesbury rip-off, understandably enough, considering their similar artistic styles—crudely drawn figures in unvarying medium shots—and subject matter considered provocative by the staid standards of newspaper comics. As the first in a five-volume collection of the strip’s entire run reveals, Breathed’s approach was more outrageous and exaggerated from the very start, and Bloom County’s residents were more offbeat than Doonesbury’s recognizable campus types. Early on, boy reporter Milo Bloom and sleazy attorney and would-be lothario Steve Dallas carried the action; the wistful heart of the strip, Opus the Penguin, arrived early in 1982; and the squirrelly anti-Garfield, Bill the Cat, debuted later that year. Fans who have missed Bloom County since Breathed retired from syndicated comics in 2008 will relish the chance to reread the Pulitzer Prize–winning strip. Newcomers to the highly topical strip will doubtless appreciate the annotations explaining such phenomena of its era as James Watt and the Falklands War. --Gordon Flagg