Rating: 
Summary: pop culture
Review: "Bloom County" was at times a devilishly funny take on life in the eighties. It began as a slavish imitation of "Doonsbury," of course, but eventually started to find its own way. At times it was too dark and cynical for its own good, but often it was a scream.
Rating: 
Summary: great content, terrible presentation
Review: bloom county is a most wonderful comic.HOWEVER, this reprint of the book is unpleasantly cheap. most annoyingly, the sunday strips inside are reprinted in black & white, obscuring a lot of the detail visible in the originals. the cover is also noticeably cheap, flimsy and low-resolution. i was very disappointed to discover these attributes when i bought the book. one would be better served by a copy from the original printing of this collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Babble on and on and on
Review: Bloom County is on my short list of all-time favorite comics. The original form, before short-lived "Outland" or the current "Opus", is long gone, though. Picking up this book was a wonderful piece of nostlagia. The series peaked some time in the early 80s, and "Babylon" offers a sample of that time. I had forgotten how topical it was, full of references to then-current supermodels, presidents, movies, and sitcoms. Despite that, much of the humor has aged well. Milo's anxiety closet, for example, never needs to end. Various bogey-men (and -women) will reside there for their times, and move on. The anxiety will always be there, however, no matter how silly it looks to everyone else. Even a book this size can't capture every strip in the five years (82-6) that it covers. That means that some of my favorite characters, like winsome Pistachio, barely even had cameo appearances. I'll take what I can get, though, and this is a pleasant sample. If you ever liked any strip comic, you liked Bloom County or will like it. Maybe the 80s were before your time, but the characters will still look right up to date. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Great book, abyssmal reprint
Review: Bloom County stands as one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Which is why it is so inexplicable that... reprinted Bloom County Babylon chose to do so in... black and white.
Rating:
Summary: Full color? I must be colorblind.
Review: Buyer beware: the editorial review states that this book contains eighty full-color pages, but it doesn't. It contains eighty pages that obviously were at one time or another in color, but which are now a messy conglomeration of grays and whites, much like something you'd expect to see coming out of a low-grade fax machine. Many years ago, I read another copy of this book that did, in fact, contain eighty full-color pages, so I know the pages were in color at some point. However, the only colors on the book I received from Amazon.com are on the front and back covers.
Rating:
Summary: Funny as a Penguin Trying to Hang Glide
Review: For the love of wonderful things, seems to always come when those wonderful things are in short supply. And so it was with Berke Breathed's Bloom County. There simply isn't enough out there. In this collection, the first five creative wacky years of Breathed's Bloom Country are captured showing Opus appearing for the first time alongside a Hare Krishna's...something is lost in translation though into Penguin-speak, "Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts." And so it is with Breathed's Bloom County. Color plates are interspersed ever so often throughout the book. The black and white really isn't a detractor though because Breathed's off the cuff semi-liberal tongue in cheek anything goes alternate reality humor takes center stage. There is Milo's Meadow where philosophy rules the day and Binkley chokes on the headlines screaming, "The Nicaraguan Contras are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers;" remember that was the 80's. Like David Lee Roth Van Halen, Northern Exposure, and the Bengal Tiger, it's too bad Bloom Country has gone the way of the Dodo, or flying penguins for that matter. All in all it's a wonderful collection; it's just too bad there's not more of it.
Rating:
Summary: Funny as a Penguin Trying to Hang Glide
Review: For the love of wonderful things, seems to always come when those wonderful things are in short supply. And so it was with Berke Breathed's Bloom County. There simply isn't enough out there. In this collection, the first five creative wacky years of Breathed's Bloom Country are captured showing Opus appearing for the first time alongside a Hare Krishna's...something is lost in translation though into Penguin-speak, "Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts." And so it is with Breathed's Bloom County. Color plates are interspersed ever so often throughout the book. The black and white really isn't a detractor though because Breathed's off the cuff semi-liberal tongue in cheek anything goes alternate reality humor takes center stage. There is Milo's Meadow where philosophy rules the day and Binkley chokes on the headlines screaming, "The Nicaraguan Contras are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers;" remember that was the 80's. Like David Lee Roth Van Halen, Northern Exposure, and the Bengal Tiger, it's too bad Bloom Country has gone the way of the Dodo, or flying penguins for that matter. All in all it's a wonderful collection; it's just too bad there's not more of it.
Rating:
Summary: Makes one go back to those days
Review: It is a pity to find only three titles by Berke in amazon, with one unavailable. Wish he drew more and Amazon carried them all. The book is a very successful criticism of silent majority and as such, makes one to sit back and think and not laugh with hysteria. I read the whole book in less then couple of hours but got back to it over and over again to review and study every minute detail in each square for minutes. I advise it to all comics lovers.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry for the B&W.
Review: Remember when we were all tempted to vote for Bill & Opus? Some folks actually did, you know. Do you remember when "Billy and the Boingers" became "Deathtongue"? I really miss Bloom County. It was a way of life, a uniquely 1980's perspective on our country that will never come again. The brilliance of idea, the sheer glee of Breathed's word choices, and the happy, bouncy parallel universe his characters all boinged around in are unforgettable. This book is the equal of all the others, though it is longer. The first few characters and situations show that Breathed has not yet found his voice-- but once he does, look out, world! My apologies, on behalf of the company for which I work (I'm sitting on the print floor as I type this!), for being forced to print this book without Breathed's color. I look through our print-on-demand rendition and I see clearly how much has been lost. I agree that it is not fair, but you must understand: had it not been done this way, the street price would have been ridiculous. Perhaps you will agree that it is better that the book never go out of print and stay inexpensive, rather than be forgotten and unread in color.
Rating:
Summary: I miss this strip so bad . .
Review: Terrific compilation of Berke Breathed's totally original comic strip which managed to comment on issues of the 80's without alienating anyone due to Breathed's wryly lovable character Opus. Breathed had a sense of humor unlike any other cartoonist - many times his humor stemmed just from the ludicrous situations his imagination devised or from the drawings themselves. I agree that the printing of this particular edition could be better, but if you're a Bloom County/Outland fan, don't let that deter you. This is an essential for the Bloom County collector.
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