Are you a Boinger?

March 17, 2003 8:02 PM

The good news? My Comics Page is hosting the great "Bloom County" strips in order, six daily strips one day and a Sunday strip the next (that's a week in two days, kids). The bad news? You have to pay $10.00 to see them.
posted by Mr_Spook (21 comments total)

$10?!?

Bastards.
posted by Plunge at 8:14 PM on March 17, 2003

We are pleased to announce that we also intend to re-publish the full run of Breathed's 1978-1979 college strip ACADEMIA WALTZ, which has long been unavailable. Details to come!

If that's included in the $10 deal, then it's probably worth it I suppose.
posted by Stan Chin at 8:16 PM on March 17, 2003

Berke must have gambling debts.
posted by ColdChef at 8:24 PM on March 17, 2003

More than $10; the 15 years of strips will take 4.2 years to run at the accelerated rate. That's five annual subscriptions.
posted by dhartung at 8:25 PM on March 17, 2003

It would actually be cheaper to buy the books used I think. I have the entire collection. Surprisingly, not as funny after all these years. But still damned good.
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:33 PM on March 17, 2003

I agree with y6y6y6. I've gone back and read some of it in the books I have, and nearly 2 decade old political humor just isn't as funny as it was when i was 6.

I didn't even know what was happening at the time either. I guess it's funnier in a vacuum.

However, there are a few gems in the mix. I'm just about ready for a Dandelion Break.
posted by askheaves at 9:33 PM on March 17, 2003

You have to pay $10.00 to see them.

ack!
posted by t r a c y at 9:48 PM on March 17, 2003

A few Bloom County strips to hold you over.
posted by herc at 9:53 PM on March 17, 2003

One of my favorite strips of all time.
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:57 PM on March 17, 2003

According to the kids at Slashdot, the online images of the strips are lacking in quality. Can anyone confirm this?

FYI, being they are showing the entire run of the strip, it could be worth subscribing, since the anthology books did not cover the entire run of the series.
posted by jca at 11:02 PM on March 17, 2003

... and this is why they make scraped RSS feeds!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:28 AM on March 18, 2003

maybe i'm reading some of the comments here incorrectly, but i find it weird that whenever people are accused of pirating digital stuff they claim the prices are too high, yet people never seem to find any price low enough to be acceptable. ten dollars for two-and-a-half year's worth of bloom county seems like an amazing deal to me (and if the guy that produced that strip were short of cash i'd send him an envelope full without asking for anything in return).
or it's just too early in the morning for my irony detector to be fully functioning. pass those dandelions...
posted by andrew cooke at 4:05 AM on March 18, 2003

Ten bucks is a good deal. Not only do you get Bloom County you also get access to archives of over 1000 other strips including my personal favourite Calvin and Hobbes. This fool and his money will soon be parted. I do this even though I've been informed on slashdot how to get full access without shelling out a dime.

It seems important to me to pay for things that are realistically priced that I also happen to be interested in. This means that Steven King won't get the extortion fees he was attempting to charge for his online dreck but I will pay for Bloom County (and the other online strips), Sluggy Freelance and a few other things.
posted by substrate at 4:53 AM on March 18, 2003

I am a member, and have been since they rolled it out. $10 a year really isn't a lot of money, and you get the archives. I love going back to the old 70s Doonesbury strips, which are all part of the digital archive.

In addition, I can read all the daily comics on one page instead of having to go back and forth between different pages. That's worth the $10 a year to me.
posted by benjh at 6:21 AM on March 18, 2003

maybe i'm reading some of the comments here incorrectly, but...ten dollars for two-and-a-half year's worth of bloom county seems like an amazing deal to me

i agree, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to say ack, 'cause you know, it's bill the cat, from bloom county. get it, get it, huh...?
posted by t r a c y at 8:09 AM on March 18, 2003

During the Boinger period, Bill's tongue gets plugged into an amp, causing him to be electrocuted to crisp.
An exasperated Steve Dallas exclaims "He's not dead again, is he?"
Opus replies "No no, I'll just go get the Bactine".

Since then there hasn't been a time when I didn't wipe spectacularly hard on rollerblades, skateboard, bike or whatever where a version of that joke didn't pop up. Genius.
posted by dong_resin at 8:35 AM on March 18, 2003

The $10 is not just for Bloom County. You also get a pretty wide selection of daily comics and (as others have mentioned above) access to DEEP archives.

I signed up when they first went to paid subscriptions a few months ago because of their great daily delivery. I can get an assload of daily strips that are not carried by my conservative local paper (like The Boondocks), plus major editorial cartoonists -- all delivered in customized e-mails.

For $10 for a full year, I thought it was a good value. Adding Bloom County just makes it sweeter.
posted by Dirjy at 8:49 AM on March 18, 2003

Dong, you make me sick.

But I love you.
posted by ColdChef at 8:50 AM on March 18, 2003

man, serializer.net is way better comics. duh.
posted by Peter H at 9:06 AM on March 18, 2003

*makes fart-y two note tuba solo for Chef*
posted by dong_resin at 11:19 AM on March 18, 2003

The first day of Bloom Country has already (in my mind) paid off: They released 2 strips that hadn't made it to the books. Woohoo!
posted by o2b at 2:30 PM on March 19, 2003