Corporations such as McDonalds and Crayola felt the barb of Breathed's wit, though not as much as Mary Kay Cosmetics. He lampooned the American military through the creation of Rosebud, a basselope (part basset hound, part antelope) that the military wanted to use to smuggle bombs into Russia. Milo and Opus both worked for the Bloom Picayune, the local newspaper, and Breathed used them to launch many attacks on the media. Opus had a nose job and constantly bought stupid gadgets advertised on TV. He also attacked American fads, institutions, and corporations. The strip supposedly ended because Trump the Cat bought the comic and fired all of the 'actors.'īreathed didn't restrain himself to ridiculing individuals. In the world of Bloom County, Donald Trump's brain was put in the body of Bill the Cat.

In the later years of the strip, Donald Trump and his outrageous wealth became a chief focus of Breathed's satire. Reading through the strip is like reading through a who's who of 1980s references: Caspar Weinberger, Oliver North, Sean Penn and Madonna, Gary Hart. Opus eventually became the star of the strip and when Breathed ended the comic, he was the last character to appear.īreathed used his comic menagerie to ridicule American society, culture, and politics. One, a parody of Garfield, was Bill the Cat, a disgusting feline that usually just said 'aack.' The other was the big-nosed penguin named Opus, who first appeared with a much more diminutive honker as Binkley's pet, a sorry substitute for a dog. But two other animals became the most famous characters of the strip. Over the years, the boarding house residents changed the Major and Bobbi Harlow vanished and the human inhabitants were joined by a host of animals including Portnoy, a hedgehog, and Hodge Podge, a rabbit. Other original residents included Mike Binkley, a neurotic friend of Milo Binkley's father Bobbi Harlow, a progressive feminist school teacher Steve Dallas, a macho despicable lawyer and Cutter John, a paralyzed Vietnam vet. Both boarding house and county appeared to be named for a local family, originally represented in the comic strip by the eccentric Major Bloom, retired, and his grandson Milo. Capturing popular attention with witty comment, the strip also offered a new perspective in the comics.īloom County began in 1980 with the setting of the Bloom Boarding House in the mythical Bloom County. During its run, the comic strip reveled in political, cultural, and social satire. A popular daily comic strip of the 1980s, Bloom County was written and drawn by Berkeley Breathed.

Bloom county