40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"restored jokes from when they were censored during publication"? Hardly, March 9, 2010
This review is from: Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 (Bloom County Library) (Hardcover)
I haven't read most of these strips in over 20 years, and like a lot of people, I'm reading much of this for the first time. These early strips unearth a whole cast of secondary and tertiary characters that were conveniently left out of the early anthologies. Before there was Opus, there was The Major - Milo's Grandfather and landlord of the Bloom County Boarding House. Strips featuring The Major were touched upon in "Loose Tails", but it's surprising to find out here that he and his wife were actually primary characters for most of the strip's first year, with some key story lines devoted to them, such as their accidental stowaway flight on the Space Shuttle.
My major criticism of this book - CENSORED COMICS. That's right, despite what the Editorial Review above reads, some of these comics are definitely censored, and I immediately picked up on three of them (which I verified with my well-worn copy of "Loose Tails"). Bobbi Harlow's mother does not find birth control pills in her daughter's medicine cabinet, she finds just "PILLS", and it completely wrecks the joke. While hunting with his father, Binkley does not open fire on a toilet bowl, he instead decimates a "PECAN TREE", which is infinitely less funny. When one of Cutter John's street races rolls to a gentle stop, he looks up in the sky and does NOT say "Clouds play hell with solar-powered wheelchairs," he says "HECK". C'mon, what are we, 8?? I can only imagine how many of these others are censored.
Breathed even comments on one censored strip in particular, in which a man pointing a gun at Bloom County TV Station owner Ashley Dashley (another character I never knew existed, who made more than a few appearances early on) has the gun erased from the frame due to pressure from the newspapers. Okay...so why not put the unedited version back in here? Cause it does look rather silly for a character to be holding up a hand as if he's pointing a gun, without a gun there.
Beyond that, Breathed's commentary on various strips in the margin is rarely revelatory. Yes, he points out the first-ever appearances of Milo, Opus, Binkley, Bill The Cat, Cutter John, Bobbi Harlow, Steve Dallas, etc., and also occasionally comments on the characters who faded quickly (Rabies The Dog, for instance), but this space is mostly used to explain his dated references, few of which are so obscure that people can't recall them on their own ("Nancy Reagan was President Ronald Reagan's wife", "Phil Donahue was a popular daytime talk show host, the Oprah of his day", "Tip O'Neill was Speaker Of The House") Instead, we could've used a few more facts that AREN'T easy to look up on the internet. For instance, why did it take several months for the first Sunday edition of the strip to debut? How did he come up with Opus' name, which didn't even become attached to the character until he'd appeared about a dozen times?
Between the censored strips, the mediocre commentary, and the poor scans (seriously, did they just use a 80's-era office Xerox machine to run these off?), this is hardly the definitive volume it could be...but it's still the best we're going to get. What the heck, it's Bloom County, it's great...just not as good as it could be.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Buy, but Don't Throw Away Your Copy of "Loose Tails" Just Yet., December 28, 2009
This review is from: Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 (Bloom County Library) (Hardcover)
SUMMARY:
2/3 of book is unpublished material from the early years!
6 strips never before in print anywhere
13 samples of Academia Waltz (Berke Breathed's first strip, whilst in college)
Factoids on sidebar to keep book relevant for future generations
High Quality Construction & Paper
Only one Problem: Image quality not as good as "Loose Tails"
STORY:
I just finished reading Vol 1 today and it's incredible. It is much, much more than I expected. Because I started reading Bloom Country in about 1985, there are entire story lines that I've missed that were never published before. Binkley's mother is in this book. There are a lot more Limekiller strips, and a lot more strips of the royal family. You finally meet the landlord. Probably 2/3 of this book was not in "Loose Tails". And this book doesn't even get all the way through "Loose Tails"!
CLOSER TO AUTHOR'S INTENT
Additionally, I noticed that some of the lines changed. I think some have been restored to their original lines before an editor got to them. Case in point: when Opus calls in to Donahue, the punch line in "Loose Tails" was that the show was on Nun beating. In Vol.1 , the punch line is Husband Beating. Looking at booth, it would appear that "Loose Tails" was doctored.
PHYSCIAL BOOK CONSTRUCTION
It's nearly perfect. It's in chronological order, and the Sunday strips' color are very good.
It's not too heavy, like the
The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 (2 vol set),
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin & Hobbes) (v. 1, 2, 3) and
Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert collections. The pages are very thick and sturdy. Are they archival? I'd have to test their ph, but I think it'll last a long time. There's even a built in bookmark.
NOT SCANNED CORRECTLY
The ONLY thing keeping me from giving this book 5 stars, is the fact that the image quality is not as good as the original compilation, "Loose Tails" by Little, Brown (out of print). Even though they mention the quality being lower for some of the older strips, I can't give them a pass on this, because I have better copies of many of the strips myself! (again, Loose Tails)
I will attempt to upload close-up comparisons of a portion of one panel of Vol.1 & Loose Tails. Please note that these images are part of this review, and therefore are allowed according to the copyrights listed on both "Loose Tails" and this publication.
Most strips in this collection are decent, but feel a little fuzzy. This is something you'll probably only notice if you have this collection side by side with "Loose Tails". However, some strips are truly bad.
Cases in point of two of the poorer scans:
Vol 1 pg: 172 punch line "Leaving a trail of slime wherev-". Compare to "Loose Tails" on page 24.
Vol 1 pg: 198 punch line "Boo". Compare to "Loose Tails" pg 47
Other printing notes:
Straight lines above the page numbers are halftone, and therefore are also fuzzy.
Blacks are not 100% black, but a little lighter. Could be because of matte paper.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin & Hobbes) (v. 1, 2, 3),
The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 (2 vol set) &
Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert do not suffer from any of these problems.
Berke; please insist that they fix this problem in the second printing (yes, I'll buy it, too) and all further volumes!
I hate to sound like a know-it-all, but when I published an independent comic book with a friend, we were able to test different scanning techniques for comic art. So, these notes below are for the publisher. They really, really need to fix this for their second printing of the book, and certainly, ALL future editions of the complete library need to have this fixed!!
Publisher: Whatever resolution you scanned the images, triple it! For the daily strips, it looks like you scanned the original artwork with the grayscale setting, then converted it to black & white, and printed it halftone. You need to scan them in Black & White (each pixel is either black or white, and no gray scale). To make this work, the scanning resolution needs to be really, really high! For a color or gray scale image, you can usually get away with 300 dpi. This will NOT work for Black and white scans!! You should scan the original artwork (the stuff Berke drew, NOT from another compilation or newspaper) at least at 800 dpi before you reduce them! The final resolution needs to be anywhere from 800 - 1600 dpi. If you need better copies, I'll lend you my copy of "Loose Tails"! Your collection is going to be the definitive collection of Bloom County! Do it for posterity! Do it for the children!
Yes, I'm a fanboy, but I assure you, I wasn't one of the people who camped in front of Berke's house waiting for this to come out (really!)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Bloom County Gold Mine, October 8, 2009
This review is from: Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 (Bloom County Library) (Hardcover)
I'm not sure what I expected from this book, having collected (over the years) every single BLOOM COUNTY book ever printed. I figured this new book wouldn't offer anything new, really, except for maybe some Berke Breathed commentary. But as I started reading, I noticed some strips that I didn't remember from the older collections, and yet they seemed vaguely familiar. Sure enough, after some back-to-back comparisons with books such as BLOOM COUNTY BABYLON, I've found that there are a great many strips here that have never been collected. We haven't seen a lot of these since they were originally in newspapers. I'm blown away by how "new" an experience this is. We'll see if that holds true for later strips, when BLOOM COUNTY really developed its personality. But these early strips are a revelation. Plus, there's a selection of Breathed's ACADEMIA WALTZ college strip. (Contrary to what he says about them in the book, I would really love a full collection of those too. They sound quite subversive.)
I do wish Breathed had offered more strip-by-strip commentary about his thoughts behind them. As they are, they're VERY sparse. The book's historical-context notes are nice to have, too, if obvious for an old guy like me.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No