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
Jonathan Coe – described by Nick Hornby as "the best English novelist of his generation" – was born and raised in Lickey on the southern edge of Birmingham and educated at King Edward's School, where he wrote his first novel at the age of 15. Coe's largely satirical novels combine the techniques of postmodern fiction with a focus on the more traditional values of humour and plot. His novel "The Rotters' Club" was set in Birmingham and satirised the city's society in the 1970s, with its sequel "The Closed Circle" taking a similar approach to Birmingham society of the first decade of the 21st century. The novelist Susan Fletcher, who was born in Birmingham in 1979, won both the Betty Trask Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award for her 2004 debut novel "Eve Green", which used the forced relocation of an 8-year-old girl from Birmingham to rural Wales to explore themes of loss, loneliness and guilt.