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Berkely Breathed Interview
TrentC writes "Ever wonder what happened to Berke Breathed of Bloom County fame? Well, so did Scott Kurtz (creator of PvP) and Chris Jackson (creator of In2It). Kurtz put out a call for information as part of his 30th birthday wish list and managed to acquire a means of contacting Breathed. Breathed wasn't necessarily happy about being tracked down, but agreed to do the interview anyways.
The first part of the interview is currently running on the front page of the PvP site, and the second half of the interview is currently running on the front page of the In2It site." Not to sound like the Bloom County fanboy that I really am but Breathed is, IMHO, an amazing artist.
I'll post first and read later (surprise on /. huh?) but this is one thing that I was scouring the net for a while back, sure that someone had done an interview, but turning up with ziltch. As popular as he is, there have got to be other interviews, no?
... But Berkeley Breathed will also forever be known in my home for writing quite possibly the best Christmas story ever published (and possibly also the best children's story):
The Red Ranger Came Calling.
This book belongs in every library children have access to.
--Just because you can doesn't mean you should--
Yes it certainly was.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
at your local library on microfilm. Most libraries carry microfilm archives of local newspapers going back a hundred or so years.
Mommy. What's a karma whore?
Sorry, but user friendly isn't funny. Load is very funny, but the artist is maybe just a tad schizo...
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
You hit the nail on the head.. I always noticed this about his cartoons.. showing one frame of the "aftermath" of the subject or gag.. a glimpse of what happened immediately after most strips would have ended. Now of course, you're right.. it's everywhere.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I too was amazed that Mr. Breathed consented to the interview. Just goes to show what an amazingly froody guy he is. (Zero points for catching the reference.)
And the first half of the interview was well presented...
And then we're taken to the second website, which is so loaded with graphics and tables that after three minutes I'm slapping the Esc key begging it to stop loading so I can get the hell out. Eventually it rendered something, with the text of the interview in a two-inch column running down the side of the browser window. Plus a retelling of the same "how we cold-called Breathed and lived to tell about it" that we got in the first half, with the addition of crappy style.
Ah well. Just had to rant. I can't stand online magazines.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Please, I just want to UNDERSTAND it all! I've done some searching, but I still can't find an email address for you. If you could email me back about the "all your base stuff", that'd be great.
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
It's a great strip, and one of the only ones worth reading in the paper anymore (along with Foxtrot, Dilbert, Curtis, and... I guess that's about it for my local rag). Sadly, it's also problematic, since it generates a lot of hate mail from all races, especially here in the south... The good thing is that McGruder has just recently published his first book collection of the strips.
For a web comic, I'd have to say my hands-down favorite is Sinfest (http://www.sinfest.net). The art style is somewhere inbetween Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes, though far more subversive and lewd than either. Enjoy!
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Ack! But enough of my accolades ... I'm not even part of the staff... :-)
Check it out at: http://www.gloomcounty.com/
"Oh Bill the Cat, we hardly knew ye..."
He's still around a bit. I make it a habit of looking up old Renaissance folkses from time to time since I'm writing a Z66 clone that'll probably never get finished.
Anyway, Tran aka Thomas Pytel's been kind of staying away from the public eye as code goes. I suppose the slow death of the demo scene got to him... Heh. Last thing I managed to dig up was that he did art for a 1998 game that looks an awful lot like souped up Z66: (Still need to try it myself) Axia
Finding any more information is pretty difficult. Web searches tend to come up with bajillions of links to their pmode/w dos extender, along with "We use this!" from other demo groups or whatnot. Most likely thing was him listed as a runner in the cherry festival in '98. (Number 669, of course. I think that's just coincidence and probably isn't him.)
As far as the rest of Renaissance goes CC Catch is the only other one I managed to dig up something on. (Some of his old mods can be found on Mod Archive. One even has his email address in the comments!) There's been a track of his called 'Ephemeral Wanderer'(I think?) that's been floating around.
What about Steve Bell? Maybe his humour doesn't cross the atlantic, but the guy is so wickedly funny it is untrue. Very political, and so far to the left that evryone hets it just as hard...
regards
treefrog
Irish. We are all made learn it in school, the whole way through. With (heh) varying degrees of success. "Mar" means because, "milis" means sweet, "do n'anam" means of your name, "agus" is and. And that, my friends, is the best I can manage from 13 years of learning Irish.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
What dictionary would that be? There's no function in it being a word, as regardless means what "irregardless" does to those who say it. If anything, it should mean regarding, as the "ir" would cancel out the "less."
Even setting all that aside, if you know better, why would you use it?
what? the scene is what? dead?
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Check out Rudy Park, it's gotta be *the* most breathed-inspired strip I've yet seen, art-wise.
I thought the same thing about User Friendly as well, and Iliad has heard it about a bazillion times by now.
Breathed was just about the only thing keeping me going through the 80s....
Perhaps. I used to be an optimist. Then I turned 4. Surely you can't think it's cynical to belive realism==cynicism? :-)
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
It was that 1/2 hour animated Bloom County show that aired on TV a loooong time ago.
It wasn't very good, and I love BC
Any idea where I can find a copy?
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If you ever read his strips as many times as I have, you will have noticed that his strips actually reflected his own life. He made several cracks about the size of strips shrinking. and the series where Opus becomes a "stripper", he has many problems with deadlines. It is actually funny how much of his own life he throws into the strip. Also, he describes Steve Dallas as his alter-ego in his last collection. I am not sure, but i think i own every single bloom county/outland collection there is.
________
Damn, I just wasted a whole hour reading UserFriendly. Hate my job........
Here's another comic that indirectly props Berke. The cat.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I AM, therefore I THINK!
I would have to disagree in two respects. First, Charles Schulz once owned that airspace. Towards the end it was almost painful to read Peanuts, but when he was good, he was unbeatable. Second, I think that Trudeau is now rummaging around the tailings of the vein he once mined. (For that matter, considering Trudeau's ripping off of pop culture (and even Charles Schulz, come to think of it), it's not clear he has much standing to be perturbed with Breathed.)
Funny thing, just this weekend I was thinking about Eyebeam. That strip was still running in the Daily Texan when I transferred to UT in '84. I remember the uproar about Hank the H winning the election, too. (Just some context for those not familiar with UT at that time: Hank was nominated and won mainly because of how disconnected students had become from student government. That's hardly a surprise at a school the size of UT, where IIRC one dorm, Jester Center, had its own ZIP code and comprised two voting precincts in Travis County.) Spring semester of '85, there was a minor uproar that the DT's editorial staff wanted to move Doonesbury from the funnies to the op/ed page, which in retrospect makes perfect sense. I can't remember whether they even did it, but we actually had big arguments at Simkins dormitory about where the strip belonged. Amazing how important stuff like that seems when you're in school.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
The Harry Pitts Band ("I'm a Boinger"):
by Richard LaClaire with Scott Freilich, Rich Kazmierczak, Mike Brydalski
Mucky Pup ("U-Stink-But-I-Love[heart symbol]-U"
by Bill Casler with Chris Milnes, John Milnes, Danny Nastasi, Scott Lepage
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
I was in Dublin a couple years back, and saw bilingual (English and Irish) on major roadsigns. Aren't "Irish" and "Gaelic" different names for the same language?
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Is this merely an expression of Slashdot's bizarre Penguin fetish? :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
Being more friendly and cordial than he really needed to be, Berke agreed to do our interview in exchange for keeping his personal info confidential.
Sounds an awful lot like "blackmail". But again, all said, it was pretty good of him to actually respond. Hopefully others won't take this as license to harass him further.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
By far the best comic quote ever uttered, especially out of the mouth of a penguin.
Ed
and I haven't seen it in the stores.
Next time I'll read the interviews first
Just yesterday, I was thinking of Bloom County, and suddenly, an article about it appears on Slashdot. That's disturbing.
Irregardless
Vermifax
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It's a shame that Breathed never grasped just how damn good he really was. I was entertained, and reassured, and inspired by Bloom County while I was growing up. So were my friends. So were countless others. It was a very positive thing. But I don't think he ever really believed that.
Children's books? With a few notable exceptions, I've found most of them forgettable. But I'll never forget Bloom County.
The interviewers come accross as a couple of ass-kissing starstruck groupies. No wonder he was pissed off that they called him.
Here's an example of the quality questions... "YEAH SO HOWS THAT DOG OF YOURS DOES IT SHED HAIR MINE SHEDS HAIR IT PEES ON THE CARPET TOO I BET YOURS DOESNT PEE THOUGH YOUR DOG IS COOL YESSIR OH YES."
Next time get barbara walters to do the interview...
- Toby
"the artistic abilities of the two are night and day."
Artistic ability is entirely subjective.
That said, I was comparing style, not ability. Breathed has the ability to draw far more stunningly detailed work than the minimalistic Bloom County work. Given that UF is simply a webcomic, it could certainly be a cheesy side project.
I've got one. :) haven't gotten around to trying to hook up a turntable to my computer yet to encode it, but...
They both like to steal from previous work without attribution.
In addition to the Doonesbury theft Breathed copped to, how about the Charley Brown cloud thing he never fessed up to.
Never read comics my ass.
I don't know that I agree with the authors' tactic of agreeing not to disclose his private contact information in exchange for an interview. It strikes me slightly as blackmail, and I hope it was just an unfortunate choice of wording to describe an innocent agreement, but...
I think the interview revealed some fascinating hints about the creative processes of one of the great humorists of our time, and I think that in itself is of immense historical value. Frankly, it blew me away to hear that he found his humor hard to come by, his deadlines painful, and that he can't be happy about the quality of his previous work.
It gives me some measure of assurance that I shouldn't feel so bad about my own work process, when I have to agonize over a bit of art when others' work seems so effortless.
Except Trudeau still has a problem with Breathed -- see the last answer at the bottom of this Doonesbury/Trudeau FAQ page...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Owned it once, yes. But he had given it up by the 1970s, at which point Peanuts became little more than endlessly repeated gags, serving little purpose than to keep fueling the Peanuts advertising/merchandising machine that made Schulz rich by whoring out snoopy to everything from bedsheets to insurance.
is to track down Bill Watterson and get him to talk about his post-Calvin and Hobbes life.
And why is it that comics like Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes have such short lives while crapola like Beetle Bailey, Blondie, and Family Circus lives forever?
You know, I just can't agree with this. Art is art - whether it's Shakespeare or a comic strip, and I hardly think Watterson is a fanatic because he wants to maintain the integrity of his message (even if that is 'don't you hate it when you boogers freeze?').
On second thought,I guess if you don't want to exploit your work for all possible $$$, you *are* a radical.
.......one more strip
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
"what do you *mean*, 'out of print' you sniveling twinkee-eating cockroach?", i queried the weird-harold lookalike.
i thought i was going to be sick. not for my lack of reading material but for some of the finest toon material ever to grace pulp, for a lost generation thinking that calvin had no peer. around the corner to the used bookstore. SEVEN OF NINE tomes for the obscenely low price of $35. i'm not sure what the cashier made of my wide-eyed dollar-waiving self.
this has brought me to one, inescapable conclusion. we must find berke, strap him to a suitable table and make him bring back the crew.
look, i'm completely cool with civility, but there comes a time when asking nice just isn't going to cut it. it's also clear that mr. breathed isn't exactly beyond using this tactic himself (see "toons for our times", pg. 59). no, i'm serious. i'm starting a website and an email campaign to petition the man to return to his sanity. he can ignore us at his own peril.
that having been said, some of his original strips are for sale - he has apparently given two years worth of strips to his stepmom and his full blessing to sell them. they can be found at:
http://www.neosoft.com/~bloom/avail1.htm
you need to have the original books to determine which are which, but ...who is going to buy one of these who doesn't have the books?! it isn't very clear, but the cheapo ones are $250 (they're in red), the regular ones are $400 and the color sunday strips are $900. the page also isn't clear on who you need to contact - carolynbreathed@hotmail.com. she seems like a very nice woman, but she does reply in ALL CAPS. be nice to her.
if any of you came through halfway and don't really know the whole gang, an exhaustive rundown can be found at http://www.droops.cybermail.net/bchistory/bchist19 81.html, covering the first appearance of limekiller to the ultimate, last toon.
finally, for anyone who doubts that illiad (respects || rips off) bloom county, please see this userfriendly.org toon..
not for my sake, but please mod the everyloving hell out of this post. i'd really like to see some of his toons get into the hands of fans.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Not only was it the best. It was the only cartoon series that I went to the store and bought the books. ( I also boughtthree of the dolls and alot more ).
I found the cartoon so funny that I made it a daily requirement in my travels to work to read.
I would like to say to him thank you for adding a bit of cheer to my life.
Onepoint
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
...which, like his chin, were always less-than-adequate (in poor Opus' mind, anyway ;)
I bought Breathed's kid's book "Edward Fudwupper Fibbed Big" for my niece this christmas, and it has to be one of the funniest books I've ever read. It has all of the great political satire (many references to Bill Clinton) and absolutely beautiful illustrations.
It's a shame I had to give it to the little two year old.
Taos
Are you crazy? User Friendly is the dumbest shit I've ever seen, and the art is crap. Bloom County is totally different...
Hmm. now if only it came with a precompiled binary... I have no ASM compiler on windows.
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
Well, I could see if they asked the site first but just mirroring copyrighted content would get them in a boatload of trouble very quickly. Besides, maybe the sites LIKE to get slashdotted. Especially those with banner ads. That's the whole point of putting up a web site with ads isn't it?
I personally loved that character - and his loss was the most disappointing part of Bloom County's end.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
You have got to be fucking kidding me. Artistic styles match? Excuse me, but call me when Illiad learns how to draw his characters in anything but 90-degree profile. And when he learns how to draw backgrounds to perspective. And when he learns how to shade. And don't forget...when he learns how to actually tell a joke.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
If you're going to list great cartoon artists, please don't forget Walt Kellly and his hilarious Pogo strips. If you're not used to '40's humour, it would be an acquired taste, albiet a well-acquired taste.
/. :(
Sorry, no links to give you - a google search turned up all kinds of stuff, but nothing good enough for
see ya
That would be Calvin & Hobbes
Now that's funny!
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
The interview refers to what sounds like a pretty nasty spat between the two artists. Perhaps I'm just a couple years too young, but I never heard about this. Anyone have a fuller explanation?
The egos in the comics industry are brutal, and they have been for decades. Breathed, Watterson and Trudeau all do great artwork, but they're all assholes in print. I think the difficulty of investing yourself into something while simultaneously preparing for the fact that no one will take it seriously forces them into eternal-defensiveness and insecurity.
I bet you could find a lot of american animators who have the same trait.
-jpowers
-jpowers
Back when Bloom County was actually running, I was in grade school. I didn't get most of the humor then (Calvin and Hobbes was my favorite, as it was for many in my generation), but I always had to grin at the mere existence of Opus and Bill...
Then, last year, I dug up a Bloom County collection at a book fair, and it all made sense.
Bloom County characterizes the 80s as much as early Doonesbury characterizes the Vietnam/70s-era mentality. As such, it's a real nostalgia-object for people like me, finding the strange world we grew up in distilled into comic form- and in retrospect, a lot of it strikes me that way, the vicarious thrill of living in a world of Reaganomics and Star Wars, when the Muppet Show would still be on in the afternoons, and Radio Shack was still pimping Tandys and handing out propaganda comics explaining how TRS-80 100s and walkie-talkies could help kids defeat russkies and drug-runners... It was a weird time to be a kid, but most times are...
Berke's (and I wonder at the post that says we've got his name wrong) cynicism is actually what pulls it all together- at the time, I was a geeky kid, wearing Space Shuttle and Freedom (remember the original space-station plans?) T-shirts, grinning at all the crazy shiny technology the Cold War machine was popping out, with the same cheezy grin on my face that I'd get seeing an F-15 up close at an air show... Now I look back on it all and have to recognize that all this Neat Stuff was being developed in some small part to make it easier to blow other people up. Sobering, in some sense, but not overly disturbing- just a nudge to remind those reading that we need to take responsibility for our actions.
I can see how Berke wants to go off and create something really 'innocent' and good, but the truth is that we remember the cynics, too, when they teach us something that sticks with us for life. Calvin and Hobbes had its cynical bent too- Calvin wasn't good, he was human. It wouldn't translate to a movie (a Hollywood movie, anyhow), since that humanity would have to be changed somehow.
"A Wish for Wings that Work" worked, though- since there was enough raw energy and innocent zaniness embodied in Opus and the whole cast- the Bloom County experience was multilayered, and the different layers of innocence and cynicysm are strong enough to survive on there own.
Anyhow, here's to Berke for the memories, and I gotta hope him the best of luck in whatever path he chooses.
Here's the "Outland/Bloom Country" inspired UF.org's. how to pronounce httpd and of course, Crap, got to go, Boss is turning out the lights just becuse of the Blackouts, and we're in Minnesota.
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
I check the comic strips in the paper now and then and am APPALLED at how miserable they are. Poorly drawn and poorly written with no sense of timing or subtlety whatsoever. 'ZIGGY' looks like Citizen Kane next to the stuff you see in the papers nowadays.
And why the 'classics' are still trotted about like giant stuffed corpse-puppets in the hands of uninspired artists and writers is beyond me. Then again, the new stuff they're trying to replace it with is, truly, that bad.
Hopefull some of the good stuff on the Web will start edging it's way into print.
**>>BELCH
except berke breathed has talent and is original, two things that illiad lacks most.
If Berke was the one who suggested it it wasn't blackmail. The sentence is unclear as to who suggested it.
Irregardless, (a word depending on what dictionary you use) I would suspect that his # has been changed.
Vermifax
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One of the tricks is to *not* be personally insulted just because the other guy is a jerk, a cheat, or a fraud, etc. You put a red tag on his ear labelling him dangerous, radioactive, or whatever; and take appropriate action to cover yourself. But after that it is just a waste of good emotion.
an example of this is when you have given your two week notice at a place that sucks. Suddenly alot of BS does not matter anymore, and you have a bit more freedom, etc.
You generally do not get cynical about potholes, etc. - So for me, being cynical has an edge of paranoia in that it is easy to view everyone with suspicion, when you merely need to label them appropriately and not get hung up on it or freak on it.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
One was for "The best library in the known universe - with the worst water" and the other was for the prairie lights bookstore.
Come by and see them sometime. Like all true comic art, they are still funny.
I thought- geez, I hope I have alot of chest hair and appeal to ladies!
That was right before puberty... now I have so much chest hair my wife hates it!!
Shaving is not an option!
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
READ THE SLASHDOT FAQ. This idea comes up every freaking article. It has been answered in the FAQ. If you disagree with the answer given, email slashdot. Don't post it.
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"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
they have come up with a list of reasons why they won't bother, but the truth is, with very little effort they could easily mirror these sites, sure some exceptions, but overall, if they wanted to fix this problem, they could.... it's just a matter of working instead of listing excuses.
________
oh my GOD I love pokey. whenever i'm sitting at my desk, totally mired in logical crap, pokey can YANK me out of the box in a matter of minutes.
I am thumbing through my copy of Academia Waltz now and noticing how tied it was to the University of Texas in the late 70s. Lots of timely comments about football, Vietnam Vets, Nuclear power, Frats & Sororities, sex, football (this is texas of course), and making fun of aggies (those folks from Texas A&M).
Brings back good memories.
UT also was the beginning another amazing comic strip called Eyebeam by Sam Hurt. http://www.samhurt.com I think that eyebeam is a cross between Bloom County and Gary Larson's the Far Side. Eyebeam was amazingly popular at UT. Eyebeam has time machines, robots, and Hank the Hullicination (who *actually* won the election for UT class president). Comment from the back of the Eyebeam book "Virtuosic....The best college generated comic strip since Doonesbury or Bloom County."
Mark
The best cartoon ever. Period.
Can't agree. The Far Side wins, hands down. Bloom County was funny, don't get me wrong, but The Far Side is responsible for more tear-inducing laughter than any other comic I can recall.
Obviously, IMNSHO.
I dig Bloom County as much as the next guy, but if my life's work inspired hundreds of thinly-disguised and humorless net comic strips I would stay out of the public eye too.
The best cartoon ever. Period.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
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"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
- Pokey the Penguin?
- Tux the Penguin?
There can be only one.Read the rest of this comment...
Is it me or is it shameless site promotion to put the interview in two parts on two differnet sites?
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Both the article and this discussion are full of hero-worship for this guy. I don't get it. I think he is utterly talentless and unfunny. I remember seeing 'Bloom County' in the college newspaper, and thinking 'why the hell do they publish this?' Of course this will get modded down for swimming against the current - such are the workings of fanboy-ism.
I notice that elsewhere in this discussion someone voiced similar dislike of Bloom Country and was told, 'fine - go back to your crappy Garfield' or words to that effect. So just for the record, all 'newspaper comics' are amazingly stupid, unfunny, and untalented. Dilbert is the only exception. But Bloom County is actually worse than the others.
In the interview, Breathed talks about how he was influenced by Trudeau. It's funny, I never fully realized that they are two different people until I read that interview - I'd always assumed one was a pseudonym for the other.
So maybe my impression was formed during the 'bad period near the end' that all the Bloomatics are referring to. Maybe I was just turned off by the clumsy political satire. Political satire takes great acuity and subtlety - Breathed did not have these gifts.
To me, the current-day Berk Breathed is Tom Tomorrow, whose strip appears in 'alternative' newspapers. Tomorrow seems to use clip art as a framework for political mini-rants and sarcasm. If he posted his ideas in an open forum like usenet, they'd be torn to shreds because they are full of factual and logical errors. But from his privileged position as 'artist' he can write without fear of rebuttal.
...if people repeatedly got my name wrong. It's Berkley Breathed, isn't it?
is what I was about to post. But it appears that in fact it was the UK editions of the books that had his name wrong? Strange.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
User Friendly is Bloom County?
YOU'VE GOTTA BE PISSING ME!!!!!!
user friendly: it's funny because it's true. microsoft sux. cleverness, originality, humor also apparently sux.
For the longest time I was sure that illiad was Berke Breathed. The artistic styles often matched far too well, the style of the humor and stories so close.
Then I noticed the same thing with some other web comics. After a while I started picking up the same (Albeit same in a Calvin-knock-off-way) vibe from all the Bill Watterson-esque webcomics out there.
So I went back, reread my Bloom Country/Outland collected editons, and realized something.
Berke Breathed is one of the greatest daily comic creators ever. Far beyond of the tepid humor of Peanuts, flying up there in the glorious airspace shared by Gary Treadau, Billl Watterson, and Gary Larson. His work influenced comic creators in the best ways possible, and now he is honored with imitation.
J: After college, I got a job. It wasn't as good.
Q: Where can we find more information about your latest projects?
J: Oh, I don't know. I think my boss has a job responsibilities list I could give you.
Q: The thing that originally attracted us to Jim's Journal was how dull and predictable its humor was. We really got a sense that you were bored writing the strip. Towards the end of your run, almost without us noticing it, that mood changed. Upon rereading them in their collections, this really becomes more noticeable. Is this an accurate observation? What changed?
J: I guess Tony just brought me down.
Q: Are you aware of the web comic phenomenon and do you currently read any of them?
J: My boss doesn't let us use the Internet.
Q: Any cartoonist that went to college in the 90's was probably influenced by Jim's Journal. However, as more and more people publish their work to the net, we're amazed at how blatantly people will borrow from your work and present it as their own. How do you feel about that?
J: My stuff wasn't really any good.
Q: One of the things that's been floating around the web is a speech that Bill Watterson gave on the future of cartooning and where it needs to go. The thing infuriates me personally, as does his stance on how merchandising a comic strip cheapens it. Didn't you and he have some public debate on this matter?
J: I like Bill, but Tony thinks he's a pinko freak.
Q: It's no secret that Simon from Sesame Street sent you a letter when Jim's Journal first started in regards to the similarities between your strips at the time. Were you and he ever able to get past your differences and do you ever have any contact with him now?
J: I don't watch Sesame Street even though Ruth says it makes her laugh out loud. I don't know Simon.
Q: Assuming you were, at one point, a fan of Star Trek, are you still one now? How do you feel about the current state of the franchise?
J: Tony thinks that the new series sucks ass. I think he's a little worked up over it.
Q: We found out that Ruth was expecting in the fall of 2000. Doing some quick math, we can figure out pretty easily that you're a new "uncle". How is "unclehood" treating you?
J: I see less of Ruth now, but the baby is cute.
Q: What did you do for Valentine's Day?
J: I ignore Hallmark Holidays.
Q: What do you think of the current crop of comic strips in the paper right now? Which comics do you enjoy reading?
J: Most of them look like they were drawn by a nine-year old. I bet Ruth's baby could get published.
Q: Do you have any regrets about not drawing Jim's Journal any more? Do you miss it?
J: No.
Q: Are all the Jim's Journal strips that have appeared in newspapers available in your collections? If not, how did you decide which of your strips would be included the books?
J: Someone wants to read it again?
Q: Is there a chance that you would return to drawing a daily comic strip and would you consider doing it for the net instead of newspapers? In our opinion, it's a much better venue for the art.
J: Like I said, my boss doesn't let us use the Internet.
Q: I made a special trip to the library while in Madison to take a look at Academia Waltz. I think a lot of your fans would like to see that work. Is there a way for them to get a look at that without making the trek to Madison? It would make great material for a web site!
J: You should visit Madison, we've got good beer.
Q: We found a book called "Jim's Journal, Garfield, Doonesbury and All That Not Funny Stuff." in which the author presents your words from various book jackets and other magazine interviews in such a way that makes it look like he's interviewing you personally. Have you seen this thing?
J: I should have said less.
Q: You have a habit of not breaking yourself while engaging in your hobbies (i.e. reading, watching TV, baking brownies, etc.). Has your heart started beating yet? Have you toned things up a bit?
J: Nope.
Q: We notice that you're very active in the animal rights community. But also, we've heard a rumor that you kept an alligator in your apartment at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At the time, the North American alligator was on the endangered species list (which probably wouldn't sit well with the PETA crowd). Could you tell us about the journey you took in becoming an animal rights activist? Was it just a ploy to meet a wife?
J: Tony lied about that to scare Ruth off.
Q: Does Ruth still own a cat? How do you keep everything free of cathair and mice corpses? My three year old tan and white (Kirby) spreads it around like nobody's business.
J: Ruth let the cat loose after the baby. I think it got ran over by a car.
-sk
I enjoy Sylvia by Nicole Hollander which almost got bumped from my daily paper but was saved by popular demand. They did move it off the comic pages tho (not unlike Doonsbury which unfortunately I don't get). A link to her (slow) website will give you a taste of her work.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Where is it written that political satire has to be subtle? I remember when they ran one series that was against the drug war (which was a pretty unpopular stance at the time) that was great. It told the tale of creating a successful hair tonic out of Bill the Cat's sweat which had unfortunate side-effects *ACK!*. Because of this it was outlawed, the prices went sky-high on the black market, and it began to be controlled by gangs. Subtle? No. Funny? Hell yeah. And the criticisms it represented are becoming more and more popular every day as people are considering what a waste the Drug War actually has become.
When I started getting interested in the comic as a youngster, I knew very little about the political satire it talked about. But I still loved it because it made me laugh (sometimes uncontrollably) anyways. That's the difference between Breathed and Trudeau. Doonesbury is repetitious and boring. Never laughed at it when I was young and I don't laugh at it now.
You mentioned Dilbert, which is good, but it's missing something important. It's missing the childlike, brilliant imagination of Bloom County. Binkley's anxiety closet is a good example of it. If all of today's comics were dry comedies about work place drudgery then I think I'd have to kill myself.
I'm sorry but if you don't think Bloom County was funny then there's only two explanations for it. 1) You and your fellow Young Republicans didn't appreciate the political humor (hey at least I can appreciate Ben Stein without getting in a huff) or 2) you have no imagination and possibly no pulse.
-Tyler
Happy people make bad consumers.
- "Classics of Western Literature"
I have a stack of 'em on my bookcase. About 6 months ago, I went into a Borders' bookstore and asked them if there existed any volumes I didn't have. Their response: "Bloom what? Who's Berke Breathed?"Damn. Kids these days.
I was watching Scott Kurtz's birthday wishlist, just waiting for this one item to happen. He has quite a few really cool ideas on that list -- I hope someone that knows George Lucas can come through for him.
As for me, I take comfort in my laserdisc copy of A Wish for Wings that Work, and (of course) a working laserdisc player.
All hail Bill! (Ack! Thppt!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
It had all these great programs like OPUS and BINKLEYterm
Before TUX, there was OPUS!
---
Was he?
- = - = - =
The absolute best Bloom County episode of them all: When the female scolds the three guys and tells them that they need to take a close look at the one thing that gives their lives meaning... They all three look down their underwear at their manhood. If any one episode needs to survive tens of thousands of years, to be found by some future historian.... that's the one.
Also, many interviews of once-celebrities probably go exactly like this - this one seems worse because the interviewers feel guilty and are being apologetic in print.
That said, I have to say that while I enjoyed Bloom County in the '80s, I recently picked up an old book at the thrift shop and was extremely disappointed. It seemed completely unfunny, and didn't hold up nearly as well as Calvin and Hobbes, or The Far Side. IMHO, obviously.
Doonesbury books still make me laugh, if they're from before Gerald Ford took office. I get a laugh out of the new strips, too, but that's because Trudeau writes with such a "look how I'm capturing the cutting-edge of American society" attitude while all his topics seem to have come from a 9 month old issue of Rolling Stone.
...He is supposed to be working in a game company somewhere... at least that's what i heard.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
That was about the most idiotic thing I have ever read. At least when I post for Katy I don't reply with dumb defenses.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
"A WISH FOR WINGS THAT WORK" ---
My all-time favorite Christmas show [which isn't played anymore], and not because I was a die-hard Opus/BC fan.
BC was LIKE Saturday Night Live for me, in that it provided me some great catch phrases ["PWWWTTT", "Closet of Anxieties", "Dandelions in October", et. al) ...
Now, for me, the REVOLUTION introduced by BC was what I now call the "comical one-two strip punch" -- in other words, a punchline at a frame in the middle of the "story", followed immediately by a SECOND punchline/retort in the last frame .... two dry moments for the price of one ....
At the time [for the first few times we all read it], we didn't really know what to think, except to acknowledge that we've never seen someone do that before. But Calvin and Hobbes basically mastered this technique, and now virtually every hot comic being published plays on some variation of this now-called "rule" ....
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
There are some great cartoonists publishing primarily or exclusively for the Web. (Aside from User Friendly, I'm a big fan of Kevin and Kell and a lot of the Keenspot comics.)
Could we please have some Slashdot interviews with some of the folks behind these comics?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
http://www.comics.com/creators/liberty/index.html
Please make sure it croaks.
"Chris: Do you have any regrets about not drawing Bloom County any more? Do you miss it?
Breathed: If the world still read the comic page... and if they weren't the size of 2 stamps... I would still do it. But their days as a topic of national conversation are over I fear. There are a great many more distractions of a more visceral nature to compete with. Too small, too quiet."
This comment brought tears to my eyes. Berke used to make cracks about comics as a dying phenomenon in his strips. I remember a "Star Trek" parody involving the endlessy shrinking size of comics in particular. Another distinct memory is of the time Opus spent working as a cartoonist, calling himself a "stripper," and being treated as a wage slave to editors demanding gag-a-day humor slapped together in time for a deadline.
He is so right that people no longer read and discuss comics. I remember discussing Bloom County and Doonesbury as a child with friends and family, now the only way it comes up is when a buddy and I discuss a webcomic, or I have to explain all the perverse/obscense/obscure webcomics I stick up at work. I truly miss having conversations about politcal candidates who wear "Frederick's of Holywood peek-a-boo panties" (From Breathed's 1988 election coverage) or little Ronald-ann sticking it to Rotney Washington the crack dealer.
Now I bask in the glory of webcomics, creations of the purist love. Bound only by themselves, webcomics fill a void created by the American newspaper editors' misunderstanding of what may be the most important art form since mankind learned to write.
Hopefully Berke will see this, and maybe get stimulated to do work online.
try:/ t/timeless.zip
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/hornet/demos/1994
hint: try it under dos, clean boot.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
The interviewers were pretty damn lucky that Berke Breathed is apparently such a nice guy. Despite Mr. Breathed's influence on modern comices, the tone of the interview and the fact that he was upset that they got his phone number more or less points to the fact that Breathed is not interested in drawing comic strips anymore and shouldn't be bothered about his old work, which he is clearly uncomfortable discussing.
Now, all that aside, it was neat to hear from him again.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I loved Bloom County, and was sorry to see it go. But like Calvin & Hobbes, it was good that it went before it became tired, in a Peanuts or Garfield kind of way.
The quotes show his witty humour at work - pretty useful if you want to see what he is like when he is being light hearted, unlike in the serious interview.
I only wish I was the sort of geek who could draw well.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
ACK!
Although Breathed says all but the earliest strips are in the books, I don't believe that's true. I happen to recall one daily strip in particular that never found its way into any of the books.
It was during the period that it was hinted that Bill the Cat was going to come "back from the dead." The strip went like this:
Now I don't remember the exact dialogue, but that was basically it. And it never showed up in any of the books. I could never figure out why. It always led me to wonder, are there other strips that never got published? I have to believe there are. That was just one that I remembered specifically, there have to be others.
Actually it started going downhill about a year after he moved west. It ended with Outland becoming just a never-ending series of anti-Gates jokes, which was funny I guess if you lived near Redmond (as Breathed did). But for the rest of the world it was like living on the outside, looking in on a group of people telling their own insider jokes to each other.
He was much funnier and more true to his audience when he lived in Iowa City. Many of the people and places in Bloom County are based on people and places in Iowa City. If you've lived there for a while as I have you can recognize them. I met his old landlady once when I was looking for a place to rent. What a shriveled-up, bitter, old, battle-axe she was. She still was mad about him and the condition he left the place 3 years after he moved out. (I saw the place, he couldn't have left it as bad as she claimed.)
When Outland ended I don't think too many people were disappointed. I read an interview just as it was ending where Breathed seemed biter that the audience didn't "get it." He didn't seem to understand that when you tailor your material to one narrow group, you shouldn't be surprised if the rest of the world ignores it.
You can tell Illiad is a fan. There have been several homages to Berke in the past. It's always nice to see someone you admire and who's work you enjoy tip their hat to someone that they admire.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I think there are some gems out there. Boondocks is a riot, especially the Nader bit, and Get Fuzzy is great. Bucky is the ultimate cat.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
"He [Trudeau] is, by the way, the best social satirist of the second half of this century." Actually, that's a couple of prophecies, if you consider the medical advances it's gonna take to keep Trudeau alive that long.
I own all the Bloom County books. Coincidentally, so does my wife (acquired before we met). So we have some extras. Oddly, I never read BC in the papers, just in the books. I picked up an Outland book once but it was like one of those lame sitcom spinoffs. I think the problem was in trying to hang too much of the comic on Opus's shoulders.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Depends on how cynical you are.
I can see two people who are good friends actually sharing something that is a golden nugget in their lives.
But you'd have to have a really good friend.
I think this interview actually qualifies as a golden nugget.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If anyone can galvanize the left, it's these 2... Personally, I've had enough of Gore/Clinton/etc, and think it's their time. :]