Bloom County
On October 25, 2017 IDW published "Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat: 1980-1989", collecting the complete run of "Bloom County" in two volumes. An "Ultimate Collectors Set" was also released, including the original art from a daily strip featuring Opus, a page from Breathed's sketchbooks, and a personalized sketch of Opus on the slipcover.Published by The Library of American Comics, an imprint of IDW Publishing.
Literature of Birmingham
Another novelist to take inspiration from the landscape of the early 20th century West Midlands was Francis Brett Young. Born just west of Birmingham in Halesowen, Young was educated in Sutton Coldfield, at Epsom in Surrey and at the University of Birmingham before training as a doctor in the city; but he only started writing the stories of Midlands life that were to make his name after leaving Birmingham in 1907. His first published novel was "Undergrowth" of 1913, but it was not until the late 1920s that he became firmly established as a best-selling writer with the resounding commercial success of 1927's "Portrait of Clare", which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was later being adapted into a film; and 1928's "My Brother Jonathan", also made into a film and later serialised for BBC Television. 27 of Young's novels – from "Undergrowth" of 1913 to "Wistanslow" of 1956 – are set in "North Bromwich", a historically and geographically detailed portrayal of Birmingham and its suburbs that collectively forms the city's most extensive fictional representation.