NYCC 2015: One of the greatest comic strips returns with new Bloom County from IDW

Announced at this past NYCC, creator Berkley Breathed’s Bloom County is back.

“As a fan, I was ecstatic when new Bloom County strips began to appear,” said Editor, Scott Dunbier. “As an editor, I’m thrilled to work on this book—thank you, Berkeley!”

Dunbier is referencing a sudden return for Bloom County, as the famed comic and it’s cast of characters reappeared via social media not all that long ago. It’s really kind of hard to imagine, but Bloom County hasn’t been published in any form since 1989. Yes, nineteen-freaking-eighty-nine. The strip ran in newspapers nation-wide from 80 through 89 and was so fantastic that it garnered a Pulitzer in addition to loads and loads of fans. And as a huge fan myself when I was a kid, I read it religiously and even bought the collected editions of the satirical series, I couldn’t be happier to hear the news that came out of NYCC 20-15 this past weekend. That news of course, was that Bloom County was to return, courtesy of IDW Publishing. Why now? Well, according to Breathed himself, because it’s fun again.

“It’s hard to say why, but for me, doing Bloom County has suddenly become… what’s the word…fun,” said Berkeley Breathed, “I’d like to think readers can tell. When the strips are brought together in a book, I think you especially can.”

Usually a traditional comic book publisher (so, lots of superhero and sci-fi stuff), IDW will be taking a new series of BC strips and putting them together into a line of books. Fans who remember the series of strips back in the 80s don’t need to worry that this will be a ‘comic’ with all the usual trapping either,, as these books will be collections of strips, just like the ones that appeared in newspapers years ago. The only difference is that with the IDW published books, there’ll be no filters placed on Breathed’s work, and he won’t need to tailor anything that he does to please editors who don’t get the content in the first place.