40 Years Ago: 'Bloom County' Begins Dissecting Politics, Culture
Bloom County. Launched on Dec. 8, 1980, it satirized – and reveled in – the fascination with pop culture, high-stakes but morally vacuous politics and immense self-regard that defined that decade. When cartoonist Berkeley Breathed penned the last strip of the comic's first run in August 1989 (he has since re- animated it in several other formats), the '80 were already on their way to becoming a thing of nostalgic mis-remembrance; it takes only a quick perusal of the old strips to remind oneself of how things really were. The comic was initially centered on a boarding house in a mythic...