The Academia Waltz

The Academia Waltz

Cover of first collection
Author(s) Berkeley Breathed
Website http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/
Current status / schedule Ended
Launch date 1978
End date 1979
Syndicate(s) Universal Press Syndicate
Publisher(s) The Daily Texan
Genre(s) Humor, Politics, Satire
Followed by Bloom County

The Academia Waltz was Berkeley Breathed's first cartoon, published daily from 1978 to 1979 in The Daily Texan at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student. The strip focused primarily on college life, although it sometimes made references to big news stories of the time (such as the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979).

Contents

Characters

Two of the characters from The Academia Waltz would be resurrected for Breathed's next strip, Bloom County: Steve Dallas and Saigon John (renamed "Cutter John"). Rabies also became a character early on in the strip, but disappeared around the time that Opus the Penguin (who would later become Breathed's most popular character) appeared; Breathed cites one reason for Rabies being "retired" is that there was "no shortage of cartoon dogs".[1]

Kitzi later made a guest appearance in Bloom County in 1985, although the character had been altered to be Steve's younger sister rather than his girlfriend (jailed for protesting Apartheid, even though their sorority doesn't even admit blacks).

Collections

Two collections featuring the comic were published. They are currently out of print and extremely rare, or as Breathed's website claims, "eBay is your only hope." [2]

A few Academia Waltz comics were also reprinted in the Bloom County collection Classics of Western Literature (1990), as well as in Bloom County: The Complete Library: Volume One: 1980-1982 (2009).

Universal Press Syndicate offers Academia Waltz through their subscription service mycomicspage.com. It's also here: http://www.gocomics.com/academiawaltz/

References

  1. ^ Breathed, Berkely (2009). Bloom County: The Complete Library: Volume One: 1980-1982, San Diego: IDW Publishing. pp 68. ISBN 978-1-60010-531-9.
  2. ^ http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/Cartoon_Collections.asp

External links

http://www.gocomics.com/academiawaltz/