Bloom County and Iowa City

A few weeks ago Princess Melawesome and I visited my cousin Meryl Irwin in Coralville, IA. She showed us around nearby Iowa City, IA.

At the Iowa City Public Library we happened upon several Berkely Breathed original cartoons!






I've been a fan of Breathed's work for as long as I can remember (through my Dad, Hemry). So this was quite exciting for me. Almost as exciting as the time I met him and had him sign a book for me and one for Hemry!
Meryl then took us to a comic shop and a book store .The store also had some Breathed originals on the wall. (I didn't realize there were originals, so I didn't take any pictures. Poo.) When I got home I found out that Breathed lived there for a while and based Bloom County pretty heavily on Iowa City. The boarding house that most of the characters from the strip is based on an actual house in the city (which I'll find when we visit Meryl next), and the Bloom County radio station's call letters are those of an Iowa City station, and the Bloom Picayune is based on an Iowa City paper.

But I ramble...

The Prairie Lights Bookstore was the basis for Bloom County's Prairie Lights Newstand!

So that was a welcome surprise at the end of a long, wonderful trip to the Dakotas and back. I hope to visit other comic strip-related points of interest. If and when I do, I'll make sure to blog about them.

Oh, for the strip at the top of this post to make sense, it helps to be familiar with Opus the Penguin from the Bloom County, Outland, and Opus comic strips and my strip Ponder and Enlightening (the strip of which this site is, in fact, a spin-off!) The penguin hilarity begins HERE!