Current status / schedule Ended End date 1979 | Launch date 1978 | |
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Syndicate(s) Universal Press Syndicate Genre(s) Humor, Politics, Satire Similar Opus, Outland, Bloom County, Adam@home, Bad Reporter | ||
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 Three Mile Island accident 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".
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."
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).
In August 2015, IDW Publishing released an anthology titled "Berkeley Breathed’s Academia Waltz & Other Profound Transgressions." The anthology collects work from Breathed's college days, publishing his strips from "The Daily Texan," his college newspaper from 1978 to 1979, along with scanned original art from his personal archives featuring Academia Waltz strips (with author's margin notes) and political cartoons.