The comic strip "Bloom County" first appeared in 1980, earning its creator, Berke Breathed, a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Just a year out of college when he approached major newspaper syndicates with two anthologies of his work, Breathed was roundly rejected. Then a call from the Washington Post reached the Daily Texan offices; sales manager Al Leeds was looking for someone to create a new strip. He commissioned Breathed. "[Leeds] had confidence I'd come up with something and hadn't the faintest idea what would work. They took what I gave them. No one at the Post, except Al Leeds, had anything nice to say about the future of the strip.

"I did not want to draw a very easily defined strip--which made it very difficult to sell. 'Bloom County' could not be summarized in one sentence, like 'Garfield: A cat who hates the world.' The only thing...