Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County Series Continues in October
Volume five of IDW’s award-winning Complete Library now available for pre-order
Best-selling chronological collection will expand to include Outland, Opus
San Diego, CA (September 12, 2011)—The wildly successful return of Opus, Binkley, Bill the Cat and the entire cast of Bloom County continues in October with BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLETE LIBRARY, VOLUME FIVE, now available for pre-order. After weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, multiple awards and nominations, and a museum retrospective, VOLUME FIVE brings readers the final chapter of Berkeley Breathed’s incredibly popular and Pulitzer Prize-winning series. And just as Breathed was drawn back to Bloom County, so will IDW finish the Complete Breathed Strip Library with the first full color, chronological reprints of both Outland and Opus, starting in 2012.
“The really funny thing about many of these past strips… is how utterly inappropriate they would be for today’s newspapers,” said Breathed. “I’m thankful there’ll be a complete record of inappropriateness now.”
BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLETE LIBRARY, VOLUME FIVE offers every daily and Sunday strip from November 30, 1987 through August 6, 1989, the day that Breathed, at the top of his game both critically and commercially, walked away from Bloom County. This ultimate volume features an introduction by Breathed and is also full of the annotations and behind-the-scenes antidotes from him, a hallmark for which the series has become known.
As with the first five volumes, OUTLAND and OPUS will also offer engaging comments and insights from Breathed about the strips. Each volume will contain the full run of Sunday-only strips, offering fans the first and only complete, full color, chronological collections, and featuring many of the characters from Bloom County.
“This is sort of a ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ moment for me,” said series editor Scott Dunbier, “While I’m happy the Bloom County Series is now collected, I’ll be sad to not be working on it anymore… but elated to have both Outland and Opus on the horizon!”
Breathed‘s Bloom County is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed newspaper strips of modern times. Premiering on December 8th, 1980 – a month after the election of Ronald Reagan as President – the strip brought a unique amalgam of contemporary politics and fantasy, all told with hilarious wit and humor. At its height, Bloom County was published in an astonishing 1200 newspapers, and the first collection, Loose Tails, sold more than one million copies.
Celebrating the cultural impact of this remarkable comic strip, IDW Publishing has teamed up with Breathed for the first complete and chronological collection of Bloom County. Each volume features the many quirky citizens of Bloom County—such as Opus, Bill the Cat, and Milo Bloom—while projecting Breathed’s uncanny ability to be both cynical and naïve, often at the same time. The first four volumes of BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLTE LIBRARY are currently available at fine bookstores everywhere, with Volume Five launching in October. The single volume of Outland will be released in April of 2012.
In addition to the print books, IDW has also released a BLOOM COUNTY application for Apple’s iPad, starting with the inaugural year, 1980-81, with more years soon to follow. BLOOM COUNTY will also launch in iBooks, shortly. Each digital edition is specially formatted, with one day’s strip per page for optimal viewing on the iPad or iPhone.
Bloom County: The Complete Library Volume Two is published by IDW under its imprint Eisner award-winning imprint, the Library of American Comics. Bloom County: The Complete Library series is edited by Dunbier and designed by Dean Mullaney.
BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLETE LIBRARY VOLUME FIVE ($39.99, 272 pages, hard cover, partial color) will be available in stores in October 2011. ISBN 978-1-61377-061-0. Diamond order code AUG11 0382.
BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLTE LIBRARY VOLUME ONE (iPad only, $7.99, December 8 1980 – December 31, 1981, partial color) is now available through iTunes [http://bit.ly/bloom-county-
9/11 10 years later
Standing in the shadow of the World Trade Center isn’t a badge of honor,it’s a mark of the beast. Sometimes, It’s almost to surreal and reflecting back is almost too hard but yet here we are.
I wasn’t working in the Trade center on 9/11. I hadn’t worked in the buildings since 2000 yet I remember so clearly all the people I once knew. Names will escape your mind but faces stay.
One of my new closest friends survived the attacks by being too lazy to get to work.This act saved her
life. The company she worked for in the Trade Center was the site of impact for one of the planes. No one survived and if she was there she wouldn’t be a close friend today.
No life is too little nor too great,each one is significant and never trivial. So 10 years later we reflect at the promise of change and the promise that we will never forget and never surrender!
Rob Base 9/11/11
Criminal Macabre: No Peace for Dead Men Review
By Rob Base
Since the advent of Comics there have always been Monsters. Up till recent memory Nothing had been as cool and as dark as the books from EC comics (thanks in part to real life monster Dr Fredrick Wertham).
With the advent of the “comics code” the years following would see the monsters that had shaped the fears in the backs of comic book readers minds taken on a new role as anti-hero or misguided souls or even worse glittery puffy love crap! The worst example is the vampire who becomes a wimpy feeling emo kid. our beings from beneath the bed have been reduced to the comical role.
Monsters have become the butt of jokes!
Yet with the amazing talent of comic pioneers like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and even Mike Mignola’s Hellboy monsters have regained their honor and become fully fledged Icons.
Criminal Macabre is a one shot that lives up to the aforementioned titles.Here is the breakdown of the comic as detailed by Dark Horse: Cal McDonald and his army of ghouls are pitted in an epic battle against the terrifying female vampire Salem, who has a deep personal connection to Cal, and her horde of monsters. With little hope of victory for either side, Cal must make his final stand to take Salem back to hell!
The art is streamlined and fresh and the dialogue lives up to the challenge.At times it flows as if you are reading a script based off any classic Tarantino film.The first three pages that were sampled to us show great promise and seem like a title that could contend against books like the Goon and Hellboy! Dark Horse seems to have a possible runaway hit with this title. The only drawback,it being a one shot comic!
Let’s hope the book does well and we can get a follow up regular ongoing series in the near future!
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: action figures
The Anarchy sisters, Panty and Stocking, are angels who were kicked out of Heaven due to their bad behavior. They are sent to Daten City (a pun on the Japanese word datenshi (堕天使, lit. “Fallen Angel”)), a place located on the edge of Heaven and Hell. Strange monsters called “Ghosts” besiege the city, but the Anarchy sisters wield a variety of mysterious powers, most notably their ability to transform their underwear and stockings into weapons.
Under the watchful eye of Reverend Garterbelt, and with their pet zipper-dog Chuck, it’s up to Panty and Stocking to destroy these Ghosts, in order to collect enough Heaven Coins to return to Heaven.
I feel fans of Mega Man and the Miss adventures of Tron Bon will really be into this toy ! coming out in late December 2011.
Pre-Order here
Transformers:Scramble City
With the release of the Transformers animated movie being held until 1990, The Japanese market needed a filler show to bridge the gap between season two and season three of the Transformers cartoon series.
This show would introduce characters that only debut in the animated film. Ultra Magnus and many of the films co-stars needed to be seen as soon as possible as well as add them into the mythos of the Universe of the Transformers.
The show starts off with a recap of the Transformers coming to Earth. It quickly covers the story of Devastator as well, and then gets right into the action.
The Autobots are shown in the middle of constructing the powerful “Scramble City,” Metroplex for the G1 purist. Its construction is being held by Ultra Magnus. The Decepticons send out Soundwave’s minions Laserbeak, ravage and ratbat to see what the autobots are doing and soon learn of the build. Megatron sends out his mighty Combiners or if you prefer Gestalts and soon all hell breaks loose!
A battle between them and their Autobot counterparts turns into an old ECW match. This animated one off wanted to focus on their “Scramble abilities “which is their interchangeability of their outer extremities.
(Get it? Cause you can scramble the limbs up!)
So much so that at one point, Breakdown of the Stunticons connects into Superion’s leg to damage him (it looks a bit weird but I assume Cybertron doesn’t have a good sexual assault law). As the show comes to a close, Scramble City himself is activated and Transforms its super cool robot mode Metroplex!
The Decepticons however, have an ace in the hole and from the deep dark part of the ocean comes Godzilla ….wait no sorry about that, it’s the Decepticons’ very own base, Trypticon.
Scramble City is one of those amazing animated shorts that we wished was in our collection but due to a whole bunch of copy right legal mumbo jumbo its only a part of the Japanese continuity.
Hit up the Pop Culture Network forums and thanks for reading
“Till all are one!”
Kotobukiya makes a Bishoujo Liara
For fans of Mass Effects the last thing any of them would want is a cute Anime version of their cast, but thanks to Kotobukiya Mass Effect’s Liarais now even hotter!
wait .. Is that even right ?
oh yeah it is 🙂
Are you hungry for Gundum?
40’s years of Cup O’ Noodle and to celebrate check out these neat collectables.
Cup Gunpla and Cup Noodles 40th anniversary sets come with a Cup Noodle and a Cup Gunpla, containing one of four different 1/200-scale figures: the RX-78-2 Gundam noodles Original Color Ver., the regular RX-78-2, the MS-06S Zaku Char noodles Original Color Ver. and the original MS-06S Zaku Char.
They go on sale in Japan on September 20th 2011
Ryan Porter Draws the PCN CREW!
