Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County, and the 80s

It's pretty weird when I realize someone I know didn't experience the 1980s. This was never more apparent than with Michael Jackson's recent passing; I would venture to estimate as much as 30-40% of the viewers who saw that had no real idea why it was on, nor how truly big a star he was.

But the hardest thing for me to truly comprehend is just how timely everything in the 1980s was; nothing that happened during that decade could have happened before or after then. The 1980s became the true height of the Cold War, and saw its end; Ronald Reagan literally brought showmanship to the Presidential office; "Reaganomics" ushered-in Dynasty and cocaine, the drug du jour, brought in Miami Vice and both helped define the fashion; Michael Jackson was the last, great superstar; and Bloom County made sure we all realized these very things. Everything in the 1980s - everything about the 1980s - was so over-the-top, in retrospect: the decade of John Hughes, crack cocaine, synth-pop, AIDS, and MTV; the 1980s never just did something, it did the living shit out of it!

More than a comic strip, Bloom County was "Gonzo..." Well, Gonzo-something. One day, it was skewering the zeitgeist, the next, reveling in its place within it. It was also - again, in retrospect - the end of many, many things... cocaine as the drug du jour, the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, John Hughes movies, the black Michael Jackson, and the syndicated comic strip.

As this excellent, short interview with Breathed explains, within five years of Breathed's departure, Bill Watterston of Calvin & Hobbes had quit (but not before blowing-up at a convention and calling Charles Schultz "a fucking dinosaur" [I love that story]) - never to be seen or heard from again - and Gary Larson had thrown-in the towel, as well. And, just like that, it was over - it was all over.

While it may seem strange to younger readers, these comic strips formed an awful lot of the 1980s' zeitgeist. These strips, along with Doonesbury and Garfield, were must-reads daily - something like The Rundown is now - and provided watercooler chat long before Jerry Seinfeld got a show. The images of these characters donned T-shirts, ballcaps, sweaters, beach towels...

That world seems so far away now.

Even harder to grasp is that it really did just suddenly stop.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009