EVEN MORE LOST BLOOM COUNTY STRIPS! YIPPEE!!

It's been a long time coming, but now it's time for part 3 of my collection of extremely rare, not-sold-in-any-store Bloom County stuff. Recently I've found out, however, that maybe not even Berke knows they exist. In his words, "I've drawn thousands of strips late at night, and usually when I sent them to the mailbox I couldn't remember them by then." So if they were never reprinted in books, he may not know of their existence. That's pretty strange, but I got it from his website. Yes, he has made a website in the time between the last installment of this amazing series and this one. It took him a while because, if you read the later strips starring Oliver, you'd know he has a huge phobia of technology like most boomers tend to have. "But every teenager has their own site glorifying themselves; it's about time I had one," he says. There are several things I've gotten in past years that I have since realized the value of. This old collection of Bloom County newspaper clippings is one. My Sonic CD game for the PC is another. I got it for two bucks at Office Depot. Beat that. Johnny Cairo, the Hawaiian correspondent who makes sure "Keiki" is accurate when it runs on this site, said "I have an autographed copy of The Academia Waltz. So beat THAT." Dang. Remember when I promised you the December 1984 cartoons featuring Cutter John as Santa? Only one in that continuity was ever printed outside of the newspapers; the Sunday one. The rest were lost. But not anymore!

Floyd Jones, huh? In an earlier strip from '84, Oliver's dad was identified as a "Howard." There are other instances of name-changing, but I can't think of them right now.

The origin of John's injury revealed!

Original newspaper version

Version that appeared in book

In most cases, when I notice a difference between a strip from a newspaper and a strip printed "permanently" in a book, it's a spelling correction, or a whited-out mistake, or even a dialogue change(see part one). This is the starkest difference I've ever seen between two Bloom County strips that are the same. The last panel was completely redrawn. Was this Berke's decision, or his editor's?

Here's another strange omission. In this story, Opus and Milo are on a mission to rescue Bill the Cat from the Rajneeshee Cult of the early 80's(this cult happened in my state, but I'm too young to remember such things). In the book, one strip starts out with a first panel where Milo yells, "I never said I didn't support animal rights!" Opus yells back, "Yes you did! You support putting baboon hearts into humans!" But when did Milo say THAT? How did that conversation even start? In this deleted strip that ran the day before, which they did not reprint.

More!