Whatever Happened to the Bloom County Cartoon?

First the back story.

From 1980 to 1989, the comic strip Bloom County ran in over a thousand America Newspapers. Its creator, Berkeley Breathed, won a Pulitzer Prize for the strip in 1987. I loved Bloom County! It was a perfect ensemble cast and I consider it the greatest comic strip ever created.

But Breathed himself didn't love the grind of creating a daily comic: "(He said) that creating the original Bloom County was agony. 'I never met a single deadline.' He was miserable, so he quit."

After a decade-long sojourn, Breathed found himself back in the comics game: "Bloom County spun off to Sunday-only offshoots Outland (1989-1995) and Opus (2003-2008). Both were well-drawn and moderately funny, but the cutting-edge wit was replaced with a broader, preachier version of Bloom County, with many of the characters left out of the Sunday-only forays."

Surprisingly, the characters of Bloom County outlived many of the newspapers that printed their adventures and, in 2015, a reboot of sorts occurred at Facebook. Many of the original characters returned, but the output was wildly sporadic. At first, there was enough content to fill 3 books:

• Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope (2016)

• Bloom County Brand Spanking New Day (2017)

• Bloom County Best Read on the Throne (2018)

But since 2023, only 7 strips have been created. Is Bloom County disappearing? No, quite the opposite.

According to Wiki: "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. In September 2022, it was announced The Simpsons writer Tim Long joined the series as showrunner."

Now I'm not Berkeley Breathed's biographer, but getting into bed with Fox sounds like a terrible idea for the notoriously sporadic Breathed, who is now in his mid-60's.

But who knows? Some could argue that the Fox Network itself was built around 2 shows: Married... with Children and the Simpsons. Matt Groening was a struggling underground comic strip artist when he created the Simpsons. Just last month, Fox renewed The Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy, and Bob's Burgers for 4 more seasons each. Fox was built on, and is now committed to, animation.

Even Married...with Children is being rebooted as a cartoon.

Yet if you check out that link under the Married...with Children story, that's from 2022, the same year the Bloom County cartoon was announced.

So for the Bloom County cartoon, no fall promos, no production updates, or no press releases for tentative premiers . On the flip side, even no news that production has ground to a halt and the whole project has been called off.

Literally N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Like the whole project is being incubated in Area 51.

As a Bloom County fan, do I think that the whole experience could turn into the cartoon version of Woodstock 50, where it was going to happen, going to happen, going to happen....then didn't happen. Then everyone sued each others' brains out. I could see that happening.

Or do I think Fox knows it has a hit on its hands and is churning out 2 seasons of comic gold in secrecy? I could see that happening too. 20 years of Bloom County cartoons and a mountain of Bill the Cat plushes? Plausible.

I think it's a coin flip.

What I know ISN'T happening is the Rick and Morty Model. Adult Swim created 10 episodes of comic gold, sat on it for 2 years, then created 10 more episodes and called it season 2. Then spent 2 more years whining about how hard it is to create cartoons. Then wash, rinse, repeat. For over a decade.

Fox is a meatgrinder. It will either be full speed ahead, or nothing.