Bloom County Meant A Lot To Me, Once

Last Thursday, after my meeting at SFMOMA, I zipped in to see the Berkeley Breathed exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum.

I have to admit, I was somewhat moved by seeing the original art of the BLOOM COUNTY strips. I was not surprised how many of them I recognized.

After all, I read the daily strip every morning before the jaunty trip to school. In fact, many of us talked about the morning comics. But those were strange and isolated times. Before the internet associated everything together. Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, Peanuts, these were news items to the nerds of my high school. Many of us wanted to be cartoonists, others just enjoyed the conversation.

So seeing those strips, in their blue pencil and pasted white out corrected state, really touched me. I felt for a few moments as if I were looking over the shoulder of a childhood hero, while he sat hunched over, working on the strip. I imagined the ease of line as Steve or Opus suddenly popped out of the white page, the dark ink edge bursting to life.

The careful printing of the dialogue surprised me the most. Since it was the most heavily edited. I imagined as the right word was discovered as an after thought, as an l’esprit d’escalier corrective. It surprised me, because in my mind, the jokes flow free and easy, like the unconsciously practiced line of a second nature character line. But I was roused that the text took work and revision. If only because it meant that the brilliance of the strip, that incisive daily wit, was the fruit of patience and labor.

While the exhibit was small, it was incredibly worth the walk through. Inspiration comes from the most unlikely sources sometimes.