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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."
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)
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'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!
They were lumped together in my mind too, but in the "infinitely re-readable" sense. While Calvin and Hobbes has aged somewhat better, you don't have to appreciate *who Ed Meese was* in order to be entertained by Opus' discussion of him. Often the Meadow Critters' understanding of the '80s politics was fairly superficial, which was okay.
It's a good recapitulation of history, especially to read about Cold-War era fears; "The Iron Giant" didn't lose any points from me for being about the '50s, nor "Cradle Will Rock" about the '30s.
But when I read Bloom County or Outland today, I find it even more compelling as a discussion of a political era that could shed some light on today's. With similar attitudes in the Bush Administration II and today's media about what it is to be God-Fearing and Rifle-Toting as in the 1980s, Opus and Milo and Binkley and Oliver... and even Bill... give us Berkeley Breathed's perspective as he was living through it, and we can get a sense of just how similar distant times can be.
I'd say it aged well.
...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?
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.
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...
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.
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
...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.
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.