Bloom County had an enormous effect on me as a young dude. I used to cut the dailies out of the Concord Tribune and paste them into spiral notebooks where I would practice drawing Bill the Cat in the margins. I might have been the only 11-year old in my school who knew who Caspar Weinberger was. I like to think reading this strip contributed a lot to my skewed sense of humor and general skepticism of authority.

Here I’ve drawn Binkley and Opus as Schroeder and Snoopy, banging out some cacophony on piano. It ain’t Billy and the Boingers but I suppose it’ll do.