Lightening the Mood
Way back in the dark ages, some 40-odd years ago… We GenXers were just reaching double digits against the calendar. And… While, we’d transcended stone tablets and cave drawings…Newspapers (and as a result, comics pages) were still a thing.
There had been a single, syndicated comic strip devoted to socio-political commentary, Doonesbury (hat tip to Garry Trudeau… Mr Jane Pauly), since 1970…. and it was getting old, boomerish, and stale by young GenX standards. Something new was needed.
Enter Berkeley Breathed and Bloom County. Instead of a cast of hippie would-be revolutionaries, Viet Nam era war vets, and Nixonian political bitching, Berke came to the table with a single yuppie, one war vet, and a cast of animals and young kids to shed some humor on a pretty bleak social period — the end of the Carter era, preceded by our only unelected president, Gerald Ford, preceded by the Nixon shit-show, preceded by the ’60s… you get the picture. Probably.
In any case, I enjoy humor as much as the next guy (and more than the Wokesters), and since homeroom comics reading in 1980, have loved the irreverence of Bloom County. It truly shaped and reflected a LOT of GenX thinking. As a result, to add some levity to my other postings here, I’ve decided to run Berke’s original strips, on a daily basis, from December 1980 to current… in order. Probably grouping a few a day (because it’s only 40+ years of work for God’s sake…). Because, I think everyone is entirely too serious, the strips make me laugh uncontrollably, there is social relevance to today (illustrating that nothing is new under the sun), and because this is my blog and I can do what I want.
Because the content is not original to Gringo Strategic, I’m going to leave these posts readable by any who happen upon the site, and not restrict them for members only, as I do with everything else.
So… without further ado, I give you the first Daily Bloom post. Thanks for the laughs, Berke, and I hope you all enjoy the strips as much as I always have:
08DEC80
09DEC80
10DEC80
11DEC80