Outland (comic)
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Outland was a Sunday-only spin-off of Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed.
In September of 1989, a month after retiring Bloom County, Breathed began his second syndicated strip with a minor character from the previous strip. Ronald-Ann Smith, a little girl from the "wrong side of the tracks" in Bloom County, entered 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 sync up with that of Outland, so the door originally appears to be hoovering 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 and bizarre backgrounds (many of which initially resembled those seen in Krazy Kat). However, Opus the penguin returned in the strip's second installment, and Bill the Cat appeared just mere months after that. Before long, the premise of another world beyond a magic door had been lost completely.
Eventually, the strip began to evolve into something a little less weird and a little more familiar. 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 promenent members of Bloom County, such as Milo Bloom, didn't make an active appearance at all (Milo did appear in the second-to-last installment of Outland, but it was 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 wasn't explicitly referenced in the story). It was made into an animated television movie that same year.
Finally, in 1995, Breathed decided to end the strip and retire from cartooning. At the strip's end, Steve comes out as being gay (and, in brillant crossover form, heads off to California with another gay character from comic Doonesbury) and Opus returned to Antarctica to live with his mother, whom he has found (much of the original comic Bloom County, in particular the collection Night of the May-Kay Commandos, focused on his quest to find her). Other characters, including Oliver and Milquetoast the cockroach, essentially decide to embrace the internet as a good idea and get involved with various aspects of that.
Eight years later, Breathed abandoned retirement and picked up where Outland had left off. The result was the Sunday-only reunion strip, Opus.
External links
- Berkeley Breathed's website (http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/)
- Toonopedia (http://www.toonopedia.com/outland.htm)