Mulliner Nights ~or~ Sustainable Literature*

Given that Plum wrote over 90 books, it is probably no huge shock to reveal that there are a good many repeated tropes.  His skill lies in making them seem new, or, at the very least, not unwelcome.  So we have Mulliner Nights, with Mr. Mulliner taking over numerous conversations to regale the assembled masses with tales of his family. 

There are not many writers who get away with this successfully.  My all-time favorite comic strip is Bloom County.  For Christmas a couple of years ago, my husband got me the collected strip** and I spent a couple of years reading them on and off just before bed.  Because I had read (and re-read, countless times) one of the earlier collections, a number of the strips were familiar to me.***  This year I received the collected works of Bloom County’s predecessor, Academia Waltz.  While I had always heard about it, the editions were rare and I never made the effort to acquire one.  My guess is that the company who came out with the Bloom County strip did a bumper crop of business and took a chance on the earlier lot. 

I did not know quite what to expect.  Knowing that this was Berkely Breathed’s early work, his juvenilia if you will, I decided to brace myself for some truly sophomoric humor and almost nothing that would remind me of Bloom County.  Early on, I encountered Steve Dallas and prepared to meet other Bloom County residents.  What I was not prepared for was the fact that a remarkable proportion of Academia Waltz was reprinted under the Bloom County moniker.  It felt as though when the cartoonist had an off day, he would dip into the well of his past, change a few characters, and call it a day.

Part of me was horrified by this revelation.  The practical side was of me admired the fact that he was not bound by any sort of copyright laws.  I am still intrigued that what does not bother me about Wodehouse raised some questions with Breathed.  Perhaps the lesson here is that we should not expect too much originality from our comic authors (or all authors, which would explain the 1,001 re-imaginations of Jane Austen’s works).  Given the choice between no new offerings and the old stuff in new wrapping, I would take the latter, for Wodehouse, anyway. 

*Read October 2016

**The main Bloom Country only; I am not a fan of Outland and was only moderately interested in Opus.  I am, however, enchanted by his daily strip on Facebook because I think that world works best when everyone is included, creating an unholy balance that some writer can only dream of.

***There are a number of phrases form Bloom County that have made their way into my vocabulary.  The most notable addition is “higgledy-piggedly” which, in our current political climate, is more useful than one would first think.