Last July cartoonist Berkeley Breathed announced via his Facebook page that he was bringing back his popular Bloom County comic strip (see “Berkeley Breathed Returning to Bloom County in 2015”).  It turns out that Breathed, who was sick of the editorial limits and incessant deadlines of newspaper publication, has used Facebook for more than just the announcement.  So far it’s the only place that his revived Bloom County strip has appeared—at least until 2016.  IDW Publishing announced today that it would publish the first volume of Breathed’s revived Bloom County strip in 2016.

IDW, which has done a great job with the reprinting of collections of the original Bloom County newspaper strip, is a natural choice to publish collections of the new Bloom County Webcomic.

Breathed, who came back to Bloom County on his own terms free of editorial restraints, explained the timing of his return: “Deadlines and dead-tree media took the fun out of a daily craft that was only meant to be fun.  I had planned to return to Bloom County in 2001, but the sullied air sucked the oxygen from my kind of whimsy.  Bush and Cheney’s fake war dropped it for a decade like a bullet to the head.  But silliness suddenly seems safe now.  Trump’s merely a sparkling symptom of a renewed national ridiculousness. We’re back baby.”