The Bloom County Library

There’s been a trend the past few years of publishing the entirety of a classic comic strip’s run in handsome (sometimes “super deluxe”) hardcover books — every single strip, Sunday and daily.They’re in the midst of doing it with Peanuts (no small project that since it ran for more than forty years); Popeye has an ongoing series of books; there’s a deluxe version of The Far Side strips; and there’s even an exhaustive set of — are you ready for this? — Dilbert. Out of all of them, the one that I’ve come closest to buying is The Complete Calvin and Hobbes — a set of three ginormous hardcover books with a combined weight of twenty-two pounds (you read that right — twenty-two). The one I really want though is Bloom County — my hands-down favorite strip of all time. Whenever I see an interview with creator Berke Breathed, he’s asked whether or not BC will ever get the “complete treatment”, and for years he’s said “no, not interested”. Well, apparently he’s had a change of heart because this coming October will mark the release of the first volume of The Bloom County Library. Each book will contain approximately two years worth of strips (for a combined total of five volumes — my math, not theirs: Bloom County ran for roughly nine years). Here’s the press release:

“Bloom County Library to Collect Entire Run of Classic American Comic Strip”

Oh, and here’s that crazy Calvin and Hobbes thing I was talking about…