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Berkeley Breathed Back in the Funnies
tetrad writes "Berkeley Breathed is creating a new Sunday comic strip, according to the Washington Post. The half-page comic strip will feature Opus the penguin from Breathed's Bloom County and Outland series, and will begin Nov. 23."
A nice start, but I want Calvin and Hobbes back. :-)
Now the 10 dollar question: will it have just Opus, or will it have just about all the characters? As I recall, Outland started with just Opus and the other characters found their way in until it was basically a Sunday Bloom County with weirder backgrounds.
It's good to hear that a wry voice from the 80's will be back in the Sunday comics. Ever since Bill Watterson quit drawing/writing Calvin and Hobbes, and Bloom County disappeared, the comics haven't been the same IMO.
Now, if only Watterson would get inspired to further the adventures of Calvin, there would be some ubiquity in the "Intellectual Section" of the daily fishwrap!
Outstanding news. I grew up with Bloom County, finding Doonesbury too off-topic for my young and yet geeky pursuits. BC had the same level of text, yet was a lot more accessible.
After all, what aspiring young hacker, typing BASIC programs into a TRS-80 at the local Radio Shack, wouldn't be inspired by Oliver Wendell Jones?
This is great news.
:)
I started collecting all of the Bloom County books just over 2 years ago. (Only 2 books left to go!)
It was amazing re-reading all of these again and how many topics written in the 80's are still topical today - especially the strips with political overtones.
And the timing couldn't be better - going into a presidential primary next year. Will Opus get sucked into running again?
Mr. Breathed's comment in the article about not having a public voice through the war - it will be great to have that voice back in the comics.
Of course, now they'll have to shrink the comic pages down another 30% to fit a new comic in.
I'm looking foreward to getting back in the know in regards to American politics. Everything I knew about 80's politics, I learned from Opus and Bill (hmm...a possible explanation for my leftist leanings). Can you blame me? I was 10 and it was more interesting than the news.
Besides his great sense of humor, Bloom County was also outstanding in that each an every strip was a masterpiece of art. I don't mean to knock Dilbert, but if you compare the quality of artwork, Dilbert could have been drawn by a 4-year-old kid (but I do love the humor of Scott Adams).
About the only other strip with comparable artwork is Doonesbury.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Sun is losing marketshare to Linux.
Joy is leaving Sun. Pic shows long hair.
Breathed is coming back, with a Penguin. Pic shows long hair.
Do I have to spell it out for you?
She didn't get the plate. I can only imagine now how satisfying it would be to have and old black text on white background plate saying "ACK THPT". What a lost opportunity.
Lasers Controlled Games!
From where I stand -- they just haven't held up. There are taped-up Far Side cartoons that I've passed in the hallway every day for years that I still laugh at. Far Side collections, Calvin & Hobbes, old Dilberts all still make me laugh. Bloom County turned out to be just a bunch of tossed-out references to '80's pop culture. 20 years later, it's as dated and forced as, say, brand new Doonesbury strips.
We'll see, but I bet the best of today's strips (Zits, Foxtrot, Monty, Drabble) are going to look quite good by comparison.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
As depressing as losing Bloom County was, Outland never came close to replacing it for me. It had lots of eye candy, but just wasn't that great a strip, IMO. OTOH, the books have been *awesome*. I reread the "kids' books" almost as often as I reread the books of all the Bloom County strips.
I hope the time away from the comics has helped him get back to the place htat he should be, and the new strip will be as good as Bloom County.
Now, where can I get a life sized Opus?
Ack! Thpppt!
Yes, Opus is back. But Bill was the one who made that noise. Opus' sensitivity and trusting nature made him a great center to both Bloom County and Outland, but without the cool intellectuality of Milo Bloom and the brash, unfounded self-confidence of uberfratboy Steve Dallas, can Opus have the same soft-hearted appeal?
I found that the strength of Bloom County was its in the way each member of its cast provided their own unique intimacy to the strip. Things like Binkley's anxeity closet and Portnoy and Hodge's satirical reiterations of contentious political issues. The diversity of characters in the strip was also unprecendented, from African-Americans (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rosalinda) who, unlike black characters in other strips, namely Peanuts, were actually of their own ethnicity, to the wheelchair-bound 'Nam vet Cutter John.
I'm just as psyched as anyone to see Opus back in the comic pages, but what I'm really hoping to see is the return of the foils that made his world so memorable.
http://cyclocosm.com Pro cycling at its worst
You can actually subscribe to MyComicsPages.com linked of Breathed's site.
/. post.
The entire back catalog is reprinted there and presumably he gets a share of the profits.
This was mentioned a while back in a previous
Here in fact
To strive, to seek, but not to yield
Painful? They already had Doonesbury which covered the anti-war and Bush-bashing department quite adequately. Breathed's comics would also have an anti-war, anti-Bush slant but would have made it thought-provoking and actually funny.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
My local paper here probably wouldn't touch this in a million years. It would take up too much of their ad space. Half of the comics on Sunday are filled with grocery coupons or other bullshit...
Not to mention that the REST of the comics are still filled with such dreck as "Garfield", "Hagar the Horrible", "Beetle Bailey", "Wizard of Id" and any number of other pieces of shit that have not had an original idea in about 20 years.
No... I'm not bitter
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
It was the non-Sunday strips that made Bloom County--all the character interaction in those few panels a day. Breathed could set-up one situation and keep it going for days or weeks. That's much of what made Outland so stale. It tried to pack everything into a self-contained Sunday strip, and it didn't work. It wasn't cohesive, surviving solely on nostalgic Bloom County fans.
Speaking of Frazz, he's always looked to me how I'd envision Calvin to look at that age. The drawing is very similar.
Co-incidence?
First they burn books, then they burn people.
In the middle of this, he also wanted to leave Bloom Country behind. He focus shifted from a white male adolescent to black female pre-adolescent. The animal shifted from a flightless motherless waterfowl and drugged garfield parody to a cynical mickey mouse parody and his pal. Unfortunately Breathed could not make the strip work, so he had to reintroduce opus and bill, which then became a product line of plush animals, greeting cards, and the like.
So the fact that the new strip concentrates on Opus and Bill is not surprising, though somewhat disappointing. Breathed drawing did become very good at the end, so I have high hopes for that. The only problem I see is that Bloom Country originated from a college paper, and the college crowd continued to be the core audience. I don't know how well his work will be received by the general audience or the current generation that grew up without exposure to his work. i hope that he will make the strip available to campus papers. Although most would not run it sunday, they could repeat it on Monday
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I heard Breathed speak at FSU, not long after Bloom County was retired, as I recall, and he told a funny story that I think will be appreciated here.
Seems Breathed had licensed the rights to the Bloom County characters for, among other products, a screen saver (mentioned here).
Now, if you remember, Breathed makes the average slashdotter seem like a Bill Gates fanboy. He did some pretty funny stuff about Bill. What did Bill think about his appearances in Bloom County? Was he even aware of them?
Breathed said that he believed that he knew the answer to that for, just weeks after the screensaver hit the shelves, it was mysteriously pulled from those shelves by every major retailer. Breathed could not find out why this had happened. His theory, however, was that someone had approached all the major vendors and politely asked them, "Which would you rather sell, the Bloom County screensaver? Or Windows 95? Take your pick."
If Breathed's theory is true, I think that would speak volumes about Bill's personality. It would indicate to me that he is, emotionally, a very, very small man, despite all his wealth and power.
In contrast, many of you will recall that Jane Goodall wrote a forward for one of Garry Larson's books. That was her gracious, well-tempered reaction to Larson's well-known 'that tramp Jane Goodall' cartoon. I know little about Goodall, but I mark her down as someone I admire, at least for that.
This message has been provided as a public service to remind you: take your work seriously, yourself, never.
Years ago, I was disgusted by a nearby U's handicapped van which looked not so much as anything but a prison wagon, navy blue, mesh in the windows and all...
I had a brainstorm. Why not liven it up - light colors, some cool graphics - what better graphic than Cutter John loaded down with all the critters from the meadow, zooming off at warp factor 9...
I called an old friend with a vehicle graphics biz. Got the labor ponied up. Called a distant relative in the paint biz. Paint would be mine. Called the Washington Post Writers Group and told them what I had in mind. They told me to hold on for a minute, then lots of phone noises, then Berke came on the line and asked me what I wanted to do. IIRC...
-Will you make any money on this?
-No, it's just something to do gratis.
-Is it for a company?
-No it's for a college.
-OK, here's the deal: you have to use an existing drawing, you can't do your own version, or get something done new.
-OK
-You have to include the original signature,
-OK
-You have to add "copyright 19-- Washington Post Writers; Group, All Rights Reserved"
-OK (long silence) - and how much for the rights? _
-Nothing. You're not making anything on this?
-No
-No one else will profit, right?
-No.
-That's it.
-Thanks!
-Send us a picure.
-OK.
I contacted the handicapped student group on campus - they thought it would be much cooler - then I started talking to the powers that be at the university to get all the clearances, etc. Big mistake. More than a year later, we still hadn't gotten so much as any written response from anywone who had to OK it - sheesh. Maybe I gave up too easily, but it was enlightneing to see the attitude of an artist vs the attitude of a few campus honchi...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I was really digging how you were reminding me of some of the characters of one of my favorite strips from days past, and then you said this piece of stinky flamebait:
The diversity of characters in the strip was also unprecendented, from African-Americans (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rosalinda) who, unlike black characters in other strips, namely Peanuts, were actually of their own ethnicity
What's more astonishing is that you started with this:
I found that the strength of Bloom County was its in the way each member of its cast provided their own unique intimacy to the strip
Damn, it's almost like you never even read Peanuts.
Although Franklin was not a major player in the later years, it is interesting to note that even though he was introduced in 1968 (a torrential year to be black in America, I would imagine) his appearance was not considered to be politically motivated.
Franklin was a solid individual in that strip, not succumbing to personal foibles like every other character around him. He was written to be as theologically smart as Linus, and (quirk of all quirks), he actually LIKED playing hockey. Franklin was a smart, strong black kid that had his s**t together.
Franklin DID bring his own unique intimacy to Peanuts by just being himself, and not making light of his ethnicity ad nauseum.
On that note, I think that the strips Boondocks and newcomer La Cucaracha are well-drawn and contain edgy humor, but their strips' commentaries as a whole underscores a larger point:
Strip writers Aaron MacGruder and Lalo Alcaraz are bitter leftists who think that blacks and hispanics have no chance at advancement in America, even though they themselves are probably earning more money than myself.
I would imagine that Franklin, on the other hand, would have done just fine just by being himself, regardless of his ethnicity.
Work is the crabgrass in the lawn of life.-Schulz
Chalupa