Editing Bloom County (section)

==Notable storylines==
''For detailed summaries of all story lines, see the entries for the individual books.''
* Opus was originally intended to have a run of just two weeks, but his status was cemented with a memorable Sunday strip involving a [[International Society for Krishna Consciousness|Hare Krishna]] asking for money. Opus continued to misunderstand the Krishna's request for money before finally misinterpreting "Prayer temples for Hare Krishnas" as "Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts!" Breathed wrote in one of the ''Bloom County'' books that the reaction was so overwhelmingly strong he made Opus a permanent member of the cast.
*In 1984 the American Meadow Party ran Bill the Cat as its presidential candidate opposing Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, with Opus as the vice presidential candidate. Their campaign slogan was, "This Time, Why Not The Worst?"  The sequence parodied the entire campaign season and the lengths some parties would go to, with Opus becoming near suicidal when told he is running behind pickled prunes in popularity polls. It did lead to the slogan of disaffected voters everywhere, "Don't blame me. I voted for Bill and Opus."
{{anchor|Billy and the Boingers}}
* Steve forms a [[heavy metal music|heavy metal]] band with Opus, Hodge Podge, and Bill, initially called "Deathtöngue". Steve is forced to rename the band "Billy and the Boingers" after he is brought before a [[United States Congress|congressional]] hearing investigating the effect of heavy metal music on youth, similar to the [[Parents Music Resource Center]].
* Opus decides to reunite with his long-lost mother for Christmas in [[Antarctica]], only to discover that his mother supposedly died saving soldiers in the [[Falklands]] war.  Her gravestone reads, 'The Falklands Martyr: She Loved her Boy'. She is later revealed to be alive.
* The cast of Bloom County goes on [[labor strike|strike]].  W. A. Thornhump refuses to concede to any of their demands and attempts to have his office staff fill in.  Things get ugly when Steve Dallas crosses the picket line and Thornhump hires [[Strikebreaker|strike-breakers]] to play Opus, Bill, and Oliver.  In the end, the strikers are defeated, although Opus still throws eggs at Steve, saying "Here comes breakfast from Aunt Opus!!"
*Oliver invents Dr. Oliver's Scalp Tonic using Bill the Cat's perspiration motivated from the thought of [[Dan Quayle]] becoming US president.  The tonic miraculously will restore hair on anyone, but has the side effect of users producing "ack" noises.  The US government bans it, but the gang decide to continue producing it illegally after discovering that desperate customers are willing to buy it at exorbitant prices. In a parody of the [[war on drugs]], the gang is extremely successful while thwarting the ineffectual government attempts to stop the illegal trade. As violent crime arises from the trade, the tonic operation is fatally undermined when the government legalizes it. The effects are later to be shown as temporary, leaving Oliver's father totally bald.
*Oliver learns of the [[Apartheid]] system in South Africa. He invents a "pigmentizer", which will temporarily turn a white person black. Cutter John and Opus are dispatched to Washington to zap the [[South Africa]]n ambassador, but their balloon-powered wheelchair crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and they disappear. Though officially listed as "Eaten By Squid", Opus reappears some time later, suffering from such strong amnesia that he initially has no idea he is even a penguin. Eventually the fake news of a secret wedding between [[Eddie Murphy]] and [[Diane Sawyer]], Opus' longtime crush, shocks him into recalling what happened. After drifting for a while between lost islands, using the wheelchair as a raft, Cutter John and Opus were rescued by a Soviet submarine and arrested as spies. In order to rescue him, Steve Dallas meets with Russian envoys to trade Cutter John in for the one thing they want from Bloom County: Bill the Cat.
*[[Donald Trump]] is accidentally and fatally injured by the anchor of his own yacht. Incredibly, surgeons turn to Bill the Cat as a donor body in which to insert Trump's still-living brain. Trapped in Bill's body, Trump finds himself disinherited from his financial empire and estranged from his wife [[Ivana Trump|Ivana]]. With nowhere else to turn, he takes Bill's place in the Bloom County boarding house, making unsuccessful attempts to start from scratch and occasionally being given equally unsuccessful lessons on the value of life by Opus. This eventually culminates in Trump regaining power and using it to buy out Bloom County, firing the entire staff of characters in the process.