Slashdot Mirror


Return Of Bloom County. Sorta

Slartibartfast writes "According to mycomicspage.com, the entirety of Bloom County will be re-published on their site, starting St. Paddy's day, and at a "highly accelerated" rate of one week every two days, until the entire strip is up. In addition -- an extra-special bonus for us Berke Breathed fans -- his college predecessor, Academic Waltz, will also be run. One caveat: it's subscription-based. However, for $10, I'd call it a huge bargain. I'm signing up."

5 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Target demographic: 28-38 by Matey-O · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or anybody that had any interest in current events in the 80's. I hope it aged well.

    (I still remember the critters and Steve D on the wheelchair running from the AT&T deathstar logo on a billboard)

    I think a 'buncha younguns(tm)' will miss out on the political satire.

    Now, do this with Calivn and Hobbes!

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
  2. Re:Great! by JudgeFurious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The difference is simple. This is priced in a reasonable manner for what it is. Actually it's priced very attractively if you are a fan of the strip. It's compelling.

    Niether music nor software are priced in accordance with their value to the people who are supposed to be doing the buying. The typical CD is immensely overpriced unless you are a fan of that artist and enjoy everything he/she/they record. For most of us it's just not worth the price for a couple of tracks. Microsoft Office for example isn't worth half of what they price it at and a $50 game is just flat out stupid in my opinion.

    Where games are concerned I play the demo sometimes. Other times I'll clone a friends copy to check it out. Legality has nothing to do with it. If it's more convienient to borrow and clone then I go that way.

    If it's worth buying I'll buy it. In the past year or so I've bought 5 or 6 games like that. I still think they're overpriced at $50 a pop but if it's a good game I give them their reward.

    The same thing goes for new music. Old music I don't pay for. In almost every case where I have older music on my hard drive that I've downloaded or borrowed/ripped then I once owned that LP/8-track/Cassette. The way I see it that music has been paid for. I'm not 100% compliant but for the most part I am.

    New music on the other hand is all about not getting ripped off.

    --
    Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
  3. Re:woot! by jridley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They didn't cancel it. Breathed stopped. I respect people who can stop when they feel their creation has run out of steam. Too many comic strips and other stuff (xanth books, for example) just keep coming as long as the money is flowing, and they turn into sad, embarassing crap.

  4. Why great comics blink out or fade to crap... by Mossfoot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sometimes what I hate is the pressure on cartoonists to publish something every damn day. No wonder a comic I find funny this year has changed to something very weak the next. Either the author opts for middle of the road cute crap with no edge meant to put a smile on your face (at best), or they keep the edge going as long as they can until they realize there just isn't enough left for them to keep their pace.

    Problem is, these authors, rather than being allowed to publish on a semi-regular basis (ie whenever they want) they have to retire, some say they're taking a break, but they never come back... inertia takes over at that point.

    I wonder if there would still be a Bloom County or Outland if Breathed was allowed to publish once every two weeks or once a month or so during the drier spells... I can only imagine what he would have done now with George W and Gulf War II... lots of material there ;)

    --
    Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
    http://www.fuzzyknights.com
  5. Peanuts by John+Bayko · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Peanuts was less about humour than about situation. How funny can the "football gag" be the tenth time around? What I enjoyed about it was more about what it meant that Charlie Brown would know full well what was going to happen, but still manage to convince himself that someday it might be different, and if he didn't give it a chance today, it might never happen.

    It never did, and Lucy always put his optimism in perspective with some quip. It might have been funny, but if you chose to think about it further, it made you reflect a bit on your own situation. You go to work/school/look for work every day, even if it doesn't seem like it'll make a difference, because of that same sort of optimism, right?

    Not everyone gets the same thing out of Peanuts, or if they do, it's not always consciously. Sometimes it's kind of like those "Chicken Soup for the Simple Minded Optimist" books - kind of gives you a good feeling even if it doesn't really do much good.

    Of course, you can always spend more effort and get as self-reflective about the Peanuts characters as you want. You can see the same things in Calvin and Hobbes and occasionally in a different way in Bloom County (but not Far Side - that was just plain wacky fun). But it wasn't fundamentally about being funny, so that's the wrong way to judge it.