Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989.

It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.

[2] Bloom County originated from a comic strip known as The Academia Waltz, which Breathed produced for The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas.

On December 8, 1980, Bloom County, syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Cutter John.

[7][6] Breathed cited the controversy over the release of Go Set a Watchman as the factor that led him to resume Bloom County.

Portnoy and Hodge Podge get jobs as janitors behind the scenes at Marmaduke; Steve Dallas joins the cast of Cathy and attempts to pitch himself as a new superhero, but is quickly fired from both jobs; Michael Binkley becomes a wild boar skinner for Prince Valiant.

The photo showed him drawing a comic strip with the title Bloom County 2015 with Opus pictured in the first frame.

[12] A fan asked in the comments on the picture if this was in response to Donald Trump's presidential campaign; Breathed responded, "This creator can't precisely deny that the chap you mention had nothing to do with it.

"[13] The next day, July 13, 2015, the first comic of the revived strip was officially posted online, also to Breathed's Facebook page.

Breathed originally had no plans of publishing the new strips outside of his Facebook page, commenting that “Newspapers need deadlines, alas.

Like my departed friend Douglas Adams used to say, the only part of deadlines I enjoyed was the whooshing sound as they sped by.”[15] An archive of the new strips has started at GoComics since then.

..are nothing but Bloom County ripoffs", then lampooning itself by mimicking Breathed's art and dialogue style in the final panel.

[18] Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic and later animated series The Boondocks, has paid tribute to Breathed's work as well, with a few aspects of the strip bearing more than a passing resemblance to important Bloom County features (including at least a couple of artistic similarities), and an episode of the animated series wherein the character Uncle Ruckus calls Breathed "Master Penguin Draw'er".

In an early strip, Milo gives his address as "Box 163, Bloom County, N.I., 12460", the zip code for which would place it about 30 miles southwest of Albany, New York.

He balks at the outrageously high quoted price for a ticket stating that "Des Moines is just 94 miles from Bloom County".

On January 29, 2016, Berkeley Breathed posted on Facebook that "The Bloom County boarding house still sits in beautiful hayseedless Iowa City, home for this cartoonist for four years.

During most of Bloom County's run, the rural meadow setting was presented realistically, while in its later years it became increasingly more abstract.

Breathed used the call letters KRNA to refer to Bloom County's rock radio station featuring "Rockin' Charmin' Harmin".

The call letters belong to an actual Iowa City rock station which featured a disc jockey named "Charmin'" Jeff Harmon in the 1980s.

[22] Several Iowa City local news items also directly inspired Bloom County story lines.

[23] On February 15, 2022, it was announced that a Bloom County television series is in development at Fox, with Berkeley Breathed as executive producer and co-writer.