Night of the Mary Kay Commandos Featuring Smell O-Toons [Paperback]

Berke Breathed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1989

A Bloom County collection featuring the Mary Kay Commandos who invade Bloom County and Opus, Milo and Steve Dallas treat them with their usual instinctive aplomb. A collection of the best daily and Sunday strips from the past year plus, in a peel-away insert, the aromatic fragrance Smell-O-Toons.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (P); 1st edition (August 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316107387
• ISBN-13: 978-0316107389
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.2 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #650,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Berkeley Breathed lives and works in Santa Barbara, California and is the proud owner of a gentle pit bull named Ridley, a deaf dachshund named Milly, and a refugee mutt from the Puerto Rican streets named Pilar--splendidly flawed dogs, every one.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "This is starting to sound like a -- a BAD COMIC STRIP!", January 12, 2004

By 

Devin de Gruyl (Grove City, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of the Mary Kay Commandos Featuring Smell O-Toons (Paperback)

This, the penultimate Bloom County collection, is of course spotlighted by the whole Mary Kay Commandos storyline, but there's so much more going on in this book, which covers roughly November 1987 - December 1988.

1988 was the year of the Bush/Dukakis Presidential election, and true to form Breathed has Bill the Cat and Opus running for office on the Meadow ticket again - thoroughly skewering the whole political process as they do so. In another extended continuity, the gang inadvertently creates the next "designer drug" craze - "Dr. Oliver's Cat-Sweat Scalp Tonic," a miracle baldness cure that the feds soon deem illegal "due to reports of rude 'Ack'-ing side effects" - in a storyline that deftly parodies both sides of the drug-legalization issue. It's as relevant today as it was fifteen years ago. Next, the 1988 Supreme Court ruling that traditionally "male-only" clubs are unconstitutional is grist for the satirical mill, as the almost 100%-male cast of Bloom County suddenly finds themselves having to add a woman to their number... which descends into all-out panic when it's revealed that one of the animal characters is secretly female!

And in the sequence that gave this book its title, Opus discovers his mother is alive and well... and a prisoner of Mary Kay's animal-research division. Breathed has admitted this was his most personal storyline; the idea of using animals to test cosmetics, and even using animal by-products to *make* said cosmetics, needless to say is anathema to an animal lover such as him. Having already visited this theme during the "hair tonic" story, here Breathed goes after Mary Kay with both guns blazing... but it's not *all* one-sided, as a militant PETA-esque organization takes some lumps as well.

Through it all, Breathed continues to hone his craft, all but completely moving away from representational art to the sort of surreal, almost Seussian landscapes that would define the latter days of Bloom County and Outland, and continue into his childrens' books. New characters that would play a key role in these later developments, such as Ronald-Ann Smith and Milquetoast, are introduced. The "new and improved" Steve Dallas is used to poke fun at the "sensitive male" stereotype, which in its own way is almost as irritating as the "old and inferior" Steve.

Bloom County is arguably the best comic strip of the 1980s. This book is a prime example of why.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best of the Bloom County collections., October 16, 2005

By 

James Yanni (Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night of the Mary Kay Commandos Featuring Smell O-Toons (Paperback)

Which is interesting, considering that it's very late in the run of the series, and for the most part, the earlier strips are funnier. But this one's the exception to that rule; most of the political satire here is as relevant today as it was 16-17 years ago, and just as funny.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Back! Back, you pink, perfumed peahens from purgatory!", August 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Night of the Mary Kay Commandos Featuring Smell O-Toons (Paperback)

This book covers Bloom County from late 1987 through the end of '88. In addition to the title continuity (which sees Opus once again searching for his mother, this time at a Mary Kay cosmetics-testing lab), the dreary days of the '88 Presidential campaign are recounted here (Bill & Opus are once again running on the Meadow ticket), the gang turns into bootleggers when their miracle hair tonic is ruled a controlled substance, and everyone goes into a panic when new federal legislation demands that a female character be added to the cast - and one of the animal characters is secretly a girl! See Spuds Mackenzie as a presidential frontrunner, see Opus take on the life of a farmer, see the debuts of Milquetoast and Ronald-Ann, see Opus attempt to join the ranks of tobacco addicts, and more! This is the period that Mr. Breathed fully realized the surrealistic style that would define the latter days of Bloom County, and carry over into Outland. The Mary Kay continuity alone, however, makes this a must-read.