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."
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."
"If we get users comfortable with shelling out cash for web content, maybe more of them will buy slashdot subscriptions. Let's run some articles about compelling web content for sale. After people are used to buying the good stuff, maybe they'll subscribe to
</conspiracy>
Speaking of, what other strips would people like to see republished online?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I already have most of the books, plus the floppy little record (which I should convery to mp3 (and ogg)) and I'll still probably sign up for this. Lord, how I miss Steve Dallas now that I've grown up and become him.
I'll also make sure that I look at all the comics out there that are derivative of Bloom County (almost wrote B.C. there) today. The guy was funny and he obviously had a huge impact otherwise.
This is just a neat idea and a bargain price. Count me in, baby.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I didn't think MyComics was worth signing up for until this became available. Bloom County rocks! And $10 a year is the right price.
Go buy the complete works, you can probably even find them used for less than cover price. Then you don't have to be in front of a tube to enjoy them, you aren't at the mercy of their business model, you've got higher resolution print copies, and you don't have to print and bind them yourself if you want all those advantages.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I read an article about this last week, and checked out the site. It's a really great idea. Not only can you view these online, but you can setup daily emails with as many of these comics as you'd like. There's also a "collection" feature where you can virtually clip comics to save in as many libraries as you'd like.
Not only do they have Bloom County and will soon have Outland, but they have Calvin & Hobbes as well! $10/year is a pretty good deal for all these great comics. Color me convinced!
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
However, for $10, I'd call it a huge bargain. I'm signing up.
If you mention you posted the story on slashdot, you might get it for free.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Number of comics = (15 Years of comics) * (365 comics / year) = 5475 comics.
Release rate = (7 Comics / 2 Days) * (365 days / year) = 1277 comics/year.
Release time = (5475 comics) / (1277 comics/year) = 4.3 years
Cost = (4.3 years) * ($10 / year) = $50 (assuming you can't pay for part of a year)
This is one of those old-time-memories that you forget about until something like this brings it back. I remember reading this comic every Saturday morning, often thinking "what the f^%#" is going on, but laughing a lot. I really love the cat, how wierd it looks, and the content of the strips was such that if you didn't laugh, there must be a physical reason as to why you cannot laugh...perhaps you are heavily medicated in a coma. Of all days, St. Paddy's day, I have another reason to turn green today.
On a side note, have an extra pint of green tonite to celebrate the second coming of bloom county
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
One thing I didn't put in the article -- 'cause I didn't know until today -- was that they are posting _EVERYTHING_. In other words, today is the first time I've seen a new Bloom County strip in 14 years. Phrased yet another way, in case you never noticed, the anthologies were incomplete. This re-posting -is- complete. For example, in the first book, notice that there were no Sunday strips? I'm dying to see my first new Sunday strip tomorrow...
I went to find collections for my kids this last year. Calvin and Hobbes is still as good, even better, than I remembered it. But Bloom County, sorry to say, is not just highly topical with 80s politics and all... it's just not quite as fantastically good. Sorry to say it, but there it is. Once you get past the initial "cute Opus" phase it just felt kind of seedy. The kids never got into the big book, either, though they're obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes now.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Give Breathed and Larson credit for knowing when to hold, when to fold, and going out on top.
I asked him how everyone would have ended up, and he said that Wendell (the nerdy computer geek that Urkel was based on) would have ended up as a Linux kernel developer.
Cool stuff.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'd pay -- through the nose -- to see original strips like Blondie (back when it was a social mores shattering strip), Krazy Kat, etc. Comics back in the 30's, during the heyday, etc. These things can be found, piecemeal, in various anthologies. To have 'em all in one place for reference, well... not only would it be a terrific glimpse into Americana, it would be great fun to read, too!
...on my Banana 2000?
Lasers Controlled Games!
In addition -- an extra-special bonus for us Berke Breathed fans -- his college predecessor, Academic Waltz, will also be run.
Pedantic correction: Breathed's original strip was called "Academia Waltz," not "Academic." It was a modest little Doonesbury ripoff that ran in THE DAILY TEXAN, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. A few of the characters later seen in "Bloom County" debuted there, but the strip is said to be of interest for Breathed completists only.
Then again, don't trust me. I never saw much of interest in "Bloom County" itself. When it won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, that seemed to me a sad moment in the history of the Pulitzer. THE COMICS JOURNAL writer R. Fiore once commented that saying "Bloom County" was funny was like complimenting a shoplifter on her taste in clothes.
Give life
Let me know when/where you mirror it. I'd like a copy too.
I may go for their "not completely satisfied in seven days?" bit. The image quality is pretty awful . . .
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
...when all of the drives and network shares for the Macs in the public computer labs were Bloom County characters. Remembering clicking on Portnoy or Opus to run Gopher brings a tear to my eye.
I remember getting my first Mac my senior year and instantly replacing the default hard drive icon with Bill the Cat's image and renaming it Ack!
Anybody know where to get Bloom County icons for OS X?
Make all the arguments you want about obscure/old unattainable bootlegs/etc that you want, HOWEVER : I love file sharing, but there is no doubt in my mind that when I download a music file that I could easily walk into any music shop and pick up right off the shelf of the "Top 20" rack, I am circumventing paying for that song. If you want to sample it, turn on the radio.
Think the whole album might suck except for the one song? Don't buy it and wait for my one kick ass song to come on the radio.
In the absence of any alternatives, theft is the only other option.
...Yeah, I wont even waste anyone's time with this one. Just highlighting you said it is enuf
Put true competition (of choice, price and flexibility) into the market and then those on Kazaa et al; can be called thieves.
There is choice. Buy the package, OR there is likely a mid priced single.
If I am selling my car, does that give you any right to say- "Hey, I wasn't interested in the entire car, I only wanted the leather seats out of it for my tricked out Ford Escort. Since you were unwilling to sell it them separately, I took the liberty of just taking them. If I like them enough, I might just buy the whole car"
Yes, I am oversimplifying thing by looking at only the current music...Are you saying you never download a current song?
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
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.
I think the /. crowd is just mad because opus is cooler than the linux penguin.
I think 10 dollars is a good price for a year subscription. I am tired of people overcharging for web content. I would like to see buisness models that rely on volume rather than high prices per customer.
Yes! The way it works, at least with Calvin & Hobbes, is that they picked some arbitrary date to start running it, and you can go back into the past as far as you'd like. There's a little archive icon under each comic, click on that and you'll get a little calendar, so you can browse back to view other comics. You can't go into the "future" (which is the past in this case, natch) but you can view comics that have already run.
Kind of like being forced not to skip ahead on those old Far Side off the wall calendars.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
Sadly, the image quality for the first week's strips is pretty bad, and the images are small. You'd think premium content would be of higher quality...
Some of the specifics may be lost on those who did not live through it, but generalities are always funny. For instance when Rosebud was outed as female, Cutter John and the crew of the Enterpoop, Bill the Cat for president or as a fundamentalist preacher. On more serious sides we have the eternal physiological truths of searching for one's mother or trying to get acceptance from ones father(the later is a theme of King of the Hill).
I really hope this encourages the development of new strips that are self aware and humble. I think a comic should be more than just a contrived excuse for a punchline.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
Just a quick FYI. You do not need to be a subscriber to get the C&H strips. They've been running for a copule of years now.
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
I respect people who can stop when they feel their creation has run out of steam.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
There's something deeply, fundamentally wrong with a universe in which Bloom County, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes are gone, while Beetle Bailey, B.C., and Blondie linger on and on and on.
One can be found on his official website.
And here's the other one (younger slashdot readers may not know about Reagan's infamous microphone test which probably inspired this strip).
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
And I think userfriendly.org had Bill the Cat on as a guest, since he is/was the only one able to properly pronounce "HTTP".
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
...Breathed won't start doing strips again. Can you IMAGINE the midnight revelations Binkley would be having about Michael Jackson these days?
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Great. So when I steal the Dodge Viper and leave $20 under the door of the Dodge dealership, I can use your argument? I don't think that $15 dollar cds are a great value, but then I don't think that you can 'justify' stealing tracks because it doesn't fit -YOUR- price scheme. If everyone held this view regarding all products/services...
For those born after me, these are an ancient storage media which consist of pieces of paper, on which images have been permeneantly inscribed, bound together in bundles. They are unique in that they require no electricity, no networking, do not crash, may comfortably be rested on one's lap when one is in the bathroom thinking, and contain absolutely no DRM
I know, I know - what's the fun in that. You can't even make 'em run Linux.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Just how tedious is it to archive (locally) huge quantities of strips like this? I mean, using MyComicsPage, let's say I sign up for a year and wish to archive Calvin & Hobbes on my computer (so's I can view 'em offline). Is this so impractical as to be impossible?
Also, which comics do they have full archives of? Is it all of them, or just a select few?
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Shouldn't the logo for this section be a penguin instead of a foot? -Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
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.
As far as leaving the original intact being justification, I'm not sure I agree. What would happen if this argument were used in other areas?
- Movies: (or even new albums). We've heard of people sneaking out digital copies of flicks/songs, and making them available on the net. In a perfect world of no-limit bandwidth, those songs could theoretically be available worldwide instantaneously. How long do you suppose people will keep putting out movies/songs if everyone had access to them before they even hit shelves/stores? If everyone thought $10 was too much for a movie, and felt they were 'harming nobody' by just downloading it...
- Drugs: Pfizer spends 10 years and $400 million finding the cure to AIDS. Your buddy works in the lab, takes home a copy of the magic formula, and soon everybody has it. Great, AIDS has been eradicated, but Pfizer soon goes out of business, and no further research is done, anywhere, because all companies have an 'information wants to be free!' guru.
- Software: Is $50 ridiculous for a game or program that took years and $millions to develop? See above movies argument. If lifting a program is made very easy and very quick; how much real advance will we see in the future? Not everyone can program fulltime just for fun and the knowledge that they are betting society from their efforts.
- How many other jobs/products/services could be lost under this justification? How many people would be out of work if everything were fair game?
I'm sure some will say that's the natural evolution of things, but I really don't think so. Someone has to spend their full time jobs creating, editing, performing, designing, programming, etc. When you, or anyone, lifts something by saying 'it's too expensive, PLUS it really isn't harming anything', I think the damage done is beyond estimation. How many people will just throw their hands in the air and say 'screw it' when they realize that they won't get paid for their work.
Would you work for free? At the end of the week, if your employer said, "well, chuck, you worked 40 hours, but I really only liked about 5 of them. Here's your check for five hours." Would you still work there? What if all companies did that? Their argument would still hold. "Hey, you're still intact! And you went bathroom SEVERAL times during the week, which we we're reimbursed for. So quit yer whining."
Mmmmm sacrilicious.
If I recall correctly (and it's mentioned in his recent Onion-AV-club interview), one of the major factors that made Berke Breathed retire was that comic strips were being shrunk to unreadable sizes. (This is currently really annoying me with Boondocks, even ONLINE fer Goodness sake!).
I always wondered, though, what if Berke had followed the path blazed by Dr. Fun , who from day 1 was publishing a 640x480 color image for each panel? Keep each daily strip 480 pixels high, and stipulate that it not be shrunk ... end of problem!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
"Have his works in paper format..." Well, no, you don't: you have *some* of his works in paper format. I, for example, can quote virtually all the anthologies: I'm that much of a fan. The six strips I saw today were _NEW_ to me, and, I promise, were never in Loose Tails.
As for "I would pay the 10 bucks if it included a week of new strips, including Sunday", what do you mean? Every two days, it publishes "a week of new strips, including Sunday." Specifically, on a given day, it publishes the dailies (Mon - Sat), and on the next day, it does the Sunday.
Granted, if you Just Don't Care, that's one thing, but this is stuff that, unless you read from Day One in the Washington Post, you've likely never seen... 'cause it ain't been anywhere else. Granted, the stuff we've seen in the books will also be putting in an appearance, and I'll enjoy them, too, but DAMN, I'd been hoping for this for years.