soaps.

Can't say much for my generation, the times

I wish they were a changin'.

The sequence is made still more ludicrous by the subsequent episode in the collection, which shows a construction worker calling for health care and a hippie calling him a comic. Breathed seems to realize that the times are a-changin', but then characteristically avoids any substantive comment on this change, instead retreating into cutisms.

This evasion is irritating because Breathed often comes so close to really super humor, only to fall short at the last moment. One never forgets his short attempts the time that he was Christic Brinkley host the evening news (the voice over: "and now here's Christic with tonight's lead story on a chain-saw murder-suicide in Toledo." Milo: "Go For It!!" Christie: "Hi! Oh Gross..") Or Elvis' secret diaries, or Norma the Nuke--but one is almost always left dissatisfied. More annoying still is Breathed's attempt to pass off his lack of follow-through as creative weirdness. No nationally syndicated comic strip ever got by on weirdness alone, except Ziggy, the continuing story of a small, blob-like character that did a few things and looked bewildered.

Certainly, it is unfair to criticize Bloom County for not filling Doonesbury's shoes, but as Avis to Doonesbury's Hertz, one would just wish that Bloom County would take the lesson from its car-dealing relative--try harder.