| Outland | |
|---|---|
 Outland header featuring Opus the Penguin | |
| Author(s) | Berkeley Breathed |
| Current status/schedule | Cancelled |
| Launch date | September 3, 1989 |
| End date | March 26, 1995 |
| Syndicate(s) | Washington Post Writers Group |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Politics, Satire |
| Preceded by | Bloom County |
| Followed by | Opus |
Outland is a comic strip written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed from 1989 until 1995. [1] It was a Sunday-only spin-off of Breathed's strip Bloom County , featuring many of the same characters.
On September 3, 1989, a month after retiring Bloom County, Breathed began his second syndicated strip with a minor character from the previous strip. [2] Ronald-Ann Smith, a little girl from the "wrong side of the tracks" in Bloom County, entering a magic doorway in a grimy alley that looked down into a cheery world of "cotton-candy trees" known as the Outland (the ground of her world did not align with that of Outland, so the door originally appears to be hovering in the sky above it).
In its earliest form, Outland had been intended to be an experimental strip for Breathed, featuring a channel for creativity in the forms of new characters (such as Mortimer Mouse, based on the rejected name for Disney's Mickey Mouse) and bizarre backgrounds (many of which initially resembled those seen in Krazy Kat ). However, Opus the Penguin returned in the strip's third installment, and Bill the Cat appeared months after that. Before long, the premise of another world beyond a magic door had been lost completely.
Breathed wrote that the strip became "Bloom County without the continuing narrative that a daily appearance allows" in the first Outland book collection. Other characters from Bloom County, such as Milquetoast the Cockroach, Steve Dallas, Oliver Wendell Jones, and Michael Binkley, became major players in the strip. Some characters, such as Cutter John, made an occasional guest appearance. A few prominent members of Bloom County, such as Milo Bloom, did not make an active appearance at all (though Milo did appear in the second-to-last installment of Outland, as a background extra on a bus).
In 1991, Breathed wrote a children's Christmas book entitled A Wish for Wings That Work . The story revolved around Opus and included several Outland characters (although the Outland itself was not explicitly referenced in the story). It was made into an animated television movie that same year.
Finally, on March 26, 1995, Breathed decided to end the strip and retire from cartooning. At the strip's end, Steve Dallas came out as gay, and eloped to California with Mark Slackmeyer from the comic strip Doonesbury . Opus returned to Antarctica to live with his mother, whom he had finally located (some story arcs of the original comic Bloom County focused on his quest to find her).
Eight years later, Breathed abandoned retirement and picked up where Outland had left off. The result was the Sunday-only reunion strip, Opus .
Many Outland strips have never been reprinted in color, though all appeared in black & white in Comics Revue magazine.
Outland strips also appeared in the 2004 book Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, which reprinted strips from Bloom County and the new Opus strip as well.
The whole output of Outland was collected by The Library of American Comics in their series, Bloom County: The Complete Library in 2012.
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.
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author, director, and screenwriter, known for his comic strips Bloom County, Outland, and Opus. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987.
Opus the Penguin is a fictional character created by artist Berkeley Breathed. Breathed has described him as an "existentialist penguin" and the favorite of his many characters.
Milo Bloom is a fictional character in the American comic strip Bloom County. He was originally the main character, but was soon overshadowed by his best friend Michael Binkley and later on by Opus the penguin.
Steve Dallas is a fictional character in the American comic strips of Berke Breathed, most famously Bloom County in the 1980s.
The Academia Waltz was Berkeley Breathed's first comic strip, published daily from 1978 to 1979 in The Daily Texan at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student. The strip focused primarily on college life, although it sometimes made references to big news stories of the time.
Opus was a Sunday strip drawn by Berkeley Breathed from November 23, 2003, to November 2, 2008. It was Breathed's fourth comic strip, following The Academia Waltz, Bloom County and Outland.
Cutter John is a fictional character in the 1980s comic strip Bloom County by Berke Breathed.
Michael Binkley is a fictional character in Berke Breathed's cartoon strip Bloom County.
Bobbi Harlow is a fictional character in Berke Breathed's comic strip Bloom County.
Lola Granola, also known as Fatima Struggle, is a fictional character in the comic strips Bloom County and Opus by Berkeley Breathed.
A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story is a children's book by Berkeley Breathed that was published in 1991. It was made into an animated television special that same year. The book and special feature characters from Breathed's comic strips Bloom County and Outland.
Toons for Our Times is the second collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published in 1984.
Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things is the third collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published in 1985.
Loose Tails is the first collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1983. At least two different editions exist; the contents and front cover art are identical but later editions swapped out the serious author biography on the back cover for a parody one.
Billy and the Boingers Bootleg is the fifth collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published in 1987.
Tales Too Ticklish to Tell is the sixth collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published in 1988. The cover image, of Opus sitting on the lap of George H. W. Bush, is a parody of the infamous photo of Donna Rice and Gary Hart from May 1987.
The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos is the seventh collection of the comic strip series Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed. It was published in 1989.
Bill the Cat, or Bill D. Cat, is a fictional cat appearing in the works of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, beginning with the comic strip Bloom County in the 1980s and continuing in Outland and Opus in the following decades. Bill also appeared in some of Breathed's illustrated children's books, including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was also made into an animated Christmas television special, and also on greeting cards and other sundry merchandise. Bill was originally capable of speaking English reasonably well, but storylines featuring an automobile accident, repeated periods of drug abuse, and brain surgery have since seen the character transition to a nearly mentally handicapped mute state in which the cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Ack!" and "Thppt!" - the former a result of his regularly choking on hairballs, the latter an approximation of "blowing a raspberry".
Bloom County: The Complete Library is a book series published by The Library of American Comics which collects the complete comic strips Bloom County, Outland and Opus all written and drawn by Berkeley Breathed between 1980 and 2008. The first volume of this series was published in September, 2009, and also received the Eisner award in the category Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips in 2010; in November 2012, the final and seventh volume finished the series.
