#and sadly once they become popular their work is often ���pearls before swine’

[the-far-bright-center]

"Over a decade after its release, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) still stands out as George Lucas’s summative and most masterful artistic statement. I use the word “summative” deliberately, because Sith incorporates a broad cinematic heritage, and also draws from Lucas’s own interests in narrative/illustrative art, architecture, world religion and mythology, anthropology, philosophy, pedagogy, and even race-car driving. In finding a tonally and visually radical common ground for these fixations, the film also addresses and subverts the director’s own oeuvre; and, as has always been the case with Star Wars, Sith contends with the poles of past and future, searching for (and sometimes grappling with) the space between. Of course, the Star Wars saga has always been anachronistic, employing science fiction iconography while also pulling famously from Joseph Campbell’s theory of monomythic commonalities in world narratives; the original film, released in 1977, also acted as a gateway to a commercial future, opening the floodgates (along with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws [1975]) for a new kind of American blockbuster cinema. However, while Lucas and Spielberg offered auteurist statements on genre that were also fortunate enough to generate mass appeal, the majority of big-budget fare has since become studio-incubated and sanctioned by market control groups, resulting in films that are often devoid of passion for cinematic language. Ironically and sadly enough, this can certainly be said of J. J. Abrams’s insipid The Force Awakens (2015), a reactionary attempt to conserve a falsely utopic view of the saga’s origins."

—Mike Thorn, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas' Greatest Artistic Statement?

[popculturebuffet]

Bloomtrospective Part 1: The Academia Waltz or Birth of an American Stinker

Once upon a time in Austin, Texas, University of Texas student Berkely Breathed, a smartass with a mustache to this very day and a loveable goofus of the highest order, was recently out of a job, thrown out on his ass by the Austin-American Statesman for one of his cartoons pissing people off. It would not be the last time one of his cartoons pissed people off, nor the end of his cartooning career, though it would probably be the last job he was outright fired from.. maybe he might of delivered pizza's, stripped or fought grown men and/or walruses for money.. I don't know what he did in his spare time.

And not long after, he found a new , regular cartooning gig in the daily texan, UT's newspaper and since college papers give far less fucks about people yelling at them than national newspapers, which gave way TOO much of a fuck about people yelling at them over comic strips, Berkely had his first regular gig. and it was this gig that lead to thousands of comic strips, 3 more series later on, plushies, an animated special, a failed pitch at dreamworks, t-shirts, bill watterson getting pissy with him, pearl clutching from concerned elderly people, letters from harper lee and lenoard nemoy, and a small album made by fans. And it all started with a small time semi-doonesbury knockoff starting an obnoxious fratboy.

Welcome one and all, to Bloomtrospective, my retrospective covering all 14 years of bloom county, and every year of it's prequel and sequels. For those not aware bloom county is a comic strip that was started by Brethed in december 1980 and went on to run till mid 89, becoming one of the most influnetal and funniest comic strips of all time, often getting into political and celebrity satire and weird shenanigans. I"m, as you can probably tell by this insane undertaking, a massive fan and more than happy to dive into all 28, yes 28, years worth of content it's creator , Mr. Brethed, put out. And before you ask, yes virginia, that is his real name. But before I can get into bloom county proper, as you can probably guess i'm tackling his college strip, the Academia Waltz.

The reason is simple: I want to track his full evolution as an artist and professinal smartass, and a lot of what would become bloom county is in the primordial ooze of this strip. That's not metaphorical either: around 41 gags, give or take one or two that are similar but not identical, were recycled for Bloom County , with a paticular gag getting recycled three times, a gag i'll get to next time as it's the very first Bloom County strip and frankly deserves a paragraph all it's own. That being said, the strips were hilarious and worth a recycle and frankly not a lot of people probably saw this strip first run, so recyling his best stuff for a wider audience is just good practice. It was done before him with Doonesbury's Gary Tredeau before him and Pearls Before Swine's Stephan Pastis after him recyling their college and web strips for syndication.

And this is far from the only way Waltz follows in Doonesbury's footsteps. For those unaware of the strip, Doonesbury is a political strip started in 1969 that's STILL GOING, albeit sunday's only since the early 2010's, and was one of the most popular and well loved strips in the world at the time Waltz came out. Brethed has out and out admitted that he curbed from the strip for Waltz and early BLoom County and implied, likely sarcastically but given Tredeau is a smartass himselff I can't be entirely sure, that Tredeau sent him obsecntiy filled letters in response. And for the record the two are now on good terms and likely were by mid-bloom county, and it's just as likely the letters were in good fun.  Both series do have a main charcter, though in doonesbury's case one of many, with sunglasses and a surly conservative attitude, and several of waltz side cast resemble doonesbury characters. And Brethed wasn't blind to this, eventually poking fun at himself late into Waltz' run.

But now with that Elephant firmly out of the room, we can move onto the strip itself which starts... with a bunch of formless one off strips about random people before solidly getting into a main cast, as i'll be going character by character here. Though for starters i'll be focusing on two: Steve and Kitzi

Our main schmuck is Steve Dallas, one of the main reasons i'm covering the strip as, along with Opus, the penguin whose the main character of Berke's works as a whole and who we'll get to in an enstalment or two, is one of the few characters Brethed uses in every single strip after this and the only one to have a lead roll in all four.

Steve is an obnoxious, racist, sexist, immature, attempted cheating, asshole of a fratboy. He was based on a friend of Berke's who hasn't come out of the woodwork to beat him senseless yet. The character was intended to be a saterzation of fratboys and toxic masculinity, but sadly as happens often several fratboys saw him as a figure to be looked up to and missed the joke to Brethed's annoyance. And he works well as that and decently as a unsymapthetic protagnist, but I do also see easily why he ended up not being the main character of BLoom County itself and more one of an ensemble with Opus and Milo taking center stage: he's an asshole. It's funner watching his misadventures with someone besides his girlfriend who should've left him LONG ago and who he threatens to molest at one point...

A gag that clearly hasn't agred great, though I concede that put in context of the time it's okay and compared to some shenanigans in 70's and 80's frat comedy, it's tame by comparison. But while not terrible here Steve works at his best with a strong personality to play off of, like most of the bloom county cast, especially as a double act with Opus at times later on. Here while there is a good bit or two with his girlfriend and soriority girl Kitz, like the condom gag used up top. 

There just.. isn't that much to her till the last leg of the strip. For most of it she's just a flat character who wnats more from the relationship and refuses to sleep with Steve for most of the strip because he's Steve. She DOES sleep with her professor, in an arc that is absolutley dreadful by today's standards, as she is very clearly drunk when both she calls him and comes over, and not only doe she sleep with him. But well....

Yup, this has happened before.. and look i'm not saying dark jokes can't be played for laughs, again the above molest gag really isn't that terrible in the context of the time, mostly because steve gets caught and presumibly roughed up immeditly. Here? A teacher takes advantage of his student, has done so with them before, and will again and it's portrayed as cheating rather than Kitzi you know, being raped. It's not great is what i'm saying, though I don't hold present day Brethead acountable for it and I doubt he's all that proud of it. He didn't exactly use this arc to represent the strip any time waltz was reprinted before he let it be fully reperinted and wasn't proud of the strip as a whole, it's just a strip that dosen't hold up well int he Me Too era and the character himself can go have sex with a rake.

Moving on from that nightmare, Kitzi DOES get an arc towards the end where she does change a bit, deciding, out of nowhere really, to change her look up and her major.

This verison does in fact sleep with steve, Ugh, but is also a slightly better foil for him and would later be the basis for a character we'll get to next time, Bobbi Harlow, who'd be a more fully realized verison, but still hasn't changed that much: she's a feminist sure but her role with steve is still the smart woman to the dumb traditional male, a dynamic that's been done to death by now, and even taking it in the context of the time just isn't that funny. She's mostly a cardboard cutout of a woman used to serve as Steve's foil and Bobbi after her would be a bit more fleshed out character wise. But we'll get to her next time.

Now onto another charcter, one who'd be fully imigrated, if breifly to Bloom County.

This is rabies, a dog. He'd be abandoned partway into the next strip because as Berke himself put it, there was no shortage of cartoon dogs, and his personality would largely become that of Milo and the forest animals. However for this strip.. he's great, consiently funny, well drawn and the most entertaining part. Some of the best bits with steve are playing off this old boy and here are some of his highlights.

Not much else to say really, he' a funny, dry sacracstic character and to me feels kinda like the blueprint for the vast majority of berke's characters to come.

Next up is Saigon John, though he’d be called Cutter John in Bloom County. He's one of the only two characters to be important to any of the following strips along with Steve. In Both strips he's a ladies man and vietnam vet, though here he's more of an out and out hippie. He's still remarkably fleshed out for this strip and even gets a full origin story at one point, that while starting goofy with Cutter having turned his rifle into a bong the final two strips are pogniant, and while having a good joke in there... still treat his being paralized in a warzone with the weight it deserves.

A standout in this run and a sign that berke does have a knack for emotinal beats as well as damn good comedy. He was also steve's roomie for a while... nothing really to go into there, just something I felt needed mentioning.

Finally, out of the major characters, we have Val, kitzi's roomate who ironically is never seen with her as frankly Kitzi is basically built to orbit around steve. I do like Val a lot though, an average looking young woman looking for love.. but as seen above usually just ends up trying to surivive an evening with some jerkhole. She's a sympatheic enough character and while she does show up for the finale, she dosen't really get an ending. Get used to that as Berke has a habit of dropping characters abrubtly. Speaking of which it's now time for a character lightning round. Outside of our main 5 here the strip had a  TON of characters that didn't really do much and whose names I struggle to remember. There's Halfoat a crossdressing football player whose a mixed bag.

Their hard to read as it's hard to tell if their transsgender or just wear women's clothing and this being a 20 something berkely brethead a time when those sorta things were given about as much thought as the producers of Cats gave the idea of making the characters not look like a crime against .. well everything really. But at least the people with an issue against them are treated as morons and Halfoat is portrayed as confident and accepted by most of the team except for the douche above. 

Fairing a little better is Threser, another football character before they dropped that gag entirely as it was basically Doonesbury's football strips but with no idea what to actually do with them besides ocasinally throw in an LBGTQ person in there and have the rest of the team be idiots about it. But Thresher is self assurred and enjoyable.

Next we have dancer, a combination of Zonker and Mark Slackmeyer from doonesbury who.. really dosen't have mcuh in the way of personality. He has an accent and that is. The british australian mismash of an accent would come up again in bloom county with LImekiller, a doonesbury ripoff for another day, but otherwise he's basically nothing.

Finally we have the WEIRDEST edition to this cast, Trooper, who appeared for 4 or 3 strips. A very transparent Zonker Harris from Doonesbury knockoff, with the odd as hell twist of "he's an alien". While BLom County would later have aliens and other weirdness from time to time, it worked because it was a hightned version of the real world, something that would be used ocasionally in waltz, but not enough yet at this point to make this any less what the hell. Just a weird footnote. But as you can tell most of these characters are also rans. THere was also a facultiy member warring against medicority, Louis berke's first POC character seen above, some guy who showed up for a while but had no reanl name or personality, Val's mother, Steve's sister and a few one shots but the strip ran through characters pretty quickly. However that does give me the lisecne to bring in the dropped character count!

Dropped Character Count: 9

9 already and with val and Kitzi both being dropped, though kitzi would be resued in a WEIRD way later on in bloom county. that already brings us up to Dropped Character Count: 11

And we've only just begun folks.But to wrap this up, the strip DID have a proper finale: with Berke’s graduation imminent, he quickly wrapped up the story with Steve casually proposing and despite the understandable issues her mother had witht he wedding, steve and kitzi were wed and the strip came to a close. Not a bad ending all things considered and as the next few strips would show, Berke had a way with endings.. for the most part.

Overall though Waltz, despite an awkward start is a decent strip.. dated sure, it was made several decades ago, but not all that bad and enjoyable enough if your a fan of Bloom County, though it's also easy enough to read once out of curosity and then never again, but i'm glad I went through it again for the Cutter John flashback and Rabies alone, and i'm equally as glad it is out there for the curious party to see where BLoom County began.

Naturally you can tell the story dosen't end here... next time Berke goes national and gets syndicated by the Washington Post as he tries to find his footing as a comic stripper and we take our first trip down to Bloom County and meet a wide variety of colorful characters.. that by year two will mostly be gone. Until next time, courage.