Berkeley Breathed eBooks

Berkeley Breathed is a cartoonist, best known for Bloom County. Born in 1957 in California, he was raised in Texas. He studied at the University of Texas.

Breathed began his career working for the Austin American-Statesman, where he drew editorial cartoons. He began publishing a regular comic strip for the Daily Texan in 1978. The strip, The Academia Waltz, was also self-published by Breathed in two collections.

In 1980, Breathed began writing Bloom County for The Washington Post. Early on, the nationally syndicated strip frequently drew on the style of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip. As the strip developed, though, it took on its own style. By the time Breathed ended it in 1989, it had appeared in over 1,200 newspapers around the world.

Bloom County earned Breathed a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. Breathed has published several compilations of the strip, including Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness in 1986.

In 1989, Breathed began a weekly cartoon, Outland, using some of the characters from Bloom County. The strip, which ended in 1995, was published at a compilation in 2012. Breathed has also used one of the characters in his most recent strip, Opus.

Since 2008, Breathed has stopped writing a regular comic strip, instead focusing on children’s books. His first children’s book, A Wish for Wings That Work, had been published in 1991. Since then he has published eight additional books for children.