Bloom County Comic Strips Get the Executive Reprinting Treatment

If you're anything like me, you're still pretty bummed that Bloom County creator (and most recently Opus writer) Berkeley Breathed was forced to retire from comic stripping due to medical reasons. He ended Opus a few months ago, and again, if you're anything like me, you went back to your old Bloom County collections and started reading them again. The only problem is, our copies (again, if you're like me) of Loose Tails and Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things are falling apart, and since they're out of print, we can't replace them.Well, finally, finally, we're getting some good news on the Berkeley Breathed front. Bloom County is going to be reprinted - the entire run of the strip, in full glory. The Beat, a blog by Publisher's Weekly, tells us (via The A.V. Club) that IDW Publishing will start sharing the magic that is Bloom County later this year, and quotes a press release:

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Bloom County Library. Beginning in October 2009, each of the five volumes will collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. This will be the very first time that many of these comic strips have been collected, and the first time in a beautifully designed, hardcover format...

In the words of Tobias Fünke, "Well, this is joyous news!" I mentioned in one of my older posts about Bloom County that reading the strip helped me learn about politics in the 1980s, and this collection seems to want to make that learning process even easier. They're providing history lessons in the book.

The Bloom County Library will also contain a series of “Context Pages” sprinkled throughout the volumes. These pages will provide perspective for the reader, presenting a variety of real-life events and personalities that were contemporary at the time of original publication.

So, finally, we get good news from Berkeley Breathed. I'm just not sure I can wait until October for this to come together. I suppose in the meantime we can takepart with Oceanites, an Antarctic Resource site that is Opus-approved.