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."

Comments

Opus!

[windowpain]

Opus flies again!

Re:Opus!

[harley_frog]

Sardine ice cream sundaes for everyone!

Breathed is back?

[American AC in Paris]

I think I speak for all of Berkeley's loyal fans when I say:

Ack! Thpppt!

Re:Breathed is back?

[jerryasher]

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?

Re:Breathed is back?

[cosmo_the_third]

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.

Re:Breathed is back?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

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.

JONES... Oliver Wendell JONES...

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a famous poet.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a famous lawyer.

Oliver Wendell Jones was a famous young hacker with a Banana Jr. computer.

Questionable

[Tebriel]

This makes me very happy. Except what exactly does "'Opus' will run on Sundays only and will fill half a page in the comics section" mean?

A half a page? How likely will this be picked up by papers if it's half a freaking page? I'd love to see it, but that may be asking too much from papers.

Re:Questionable

[bricriu]

Remember, this is a man whose abrupt departure in '87 gave heart attacks to the comic page editors (if such things exist) of 1,300 papers... and a man who could command a Sunday-only strip several years ago that, IIRC, took up about 1/3 of a page.

Considering the dismal state of printed-page comics today, I'm not surprised that many would leap at the chance to put a Sure Thing back in, even at that space-cost. Breathed's bargaining from strength and he knows it.

Re:Questionable

[TrippTDF]

Keep in mind-

1) Bloom County was WILDLY popular, and I'm sure that a lot of people will pick it up again, unthinking

2) Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) pulled it off quite well, and he didn't loose too many papers when he went to half-page

3) Brethead says in the article that he missed having a public voice. He's not a quiet kind of guy, and I'm sure that he will get himself in a winder distribution than just a few papers

4) He's got a Bloom County website, and since he IS trying to reach a larger audience, I'll bet the strip will be online as well. I don't think he's doing this for money. He MUST have cleaned up in the eighties.

SHOOT THE #$^#@ LAWYERS! MORE SKIN ON HBO! L.H. PUTGRASS SIGNING OFF AND HEADING FOR THE TUB!

Re:Questionable

[fermion]

Bloom County was wildly popular. The switch was his decision, and we were all quite sad to see it go. If i remember correctly, Breathed was trying to do three things when he switched from Bloom County to Outland. First, he did not want the hassle of the daily strip. He told many the tale of his frantic late nights and last minute work on plane trips to deliver copy to his publisher. Second, he was protesting the fact that newspapers were shrinking comic strip to barely legible form. It was impossible to make out the text much less the artwork. Third, he wanted to concentrate more on the artwork: larger vistas, more detail.

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

A start

[Salo2112]

A nice start, but I want Calvin and Hobbes back. :-)

Opus Comeback!

[Dieppe]

I remember the Breathed "retired" oh so many years ago, but I wonder if this comeback is like many 60's and 70's band "comeback tours"... that is to say he's found that he needs the money and there is still (somehow) enough interest out there to him to milk...?

Re:Opus Comeback!

[foolish]

He's actually a fairly successful children's book writer, a fact mentioned in the Ask /. that was done close to a year ago, IIRC.

Huzzah!

[Tsunamio]

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.

Re:Huzzah!

[Fesh]

No flame intended, but it wasn't about Opus at all in the beginning. He showed up as a running gag and managed to steal the show... *shrug* More power to 'im.

Opus is Back! Now Bring Back Calvin!!!!

[ausoleil]

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!

Good

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

We could really use some better comic strips (especially ones with penguins in them).

I really missed the days of the Far Side. Non-sequiter is pretty good. And I don't need to say anything about Dilbert. But the rest of the comics suck. Maybe I'm just getting old. But it seems like comics used to be much better. I hope this one helps with the comeback of good comics.

I've never seen this Opus before, but I think Tux could take him.

Re:Good

[Rogerborg]

Try This Modern World. The archive links are on the left.

I'm so happy.....

[hetairoi]

I'm taking the rest of the day off to go romp through a dandelion patch!

Harry Knowles is a big, fat, red-headed idiot

[Bonker]

Harry Knowles, editor in chief of the Web's Ain't It Cool News and an avid fan of newspaper comics. "I think there's been three great strips that have gone away over the last five, 10 years that I really miss: 'Bloom County,' 'Calvin and Hobbes' and 'The Far Side.' Those are the three strips that never should have ceased."

These strips ended when they should have... ie... when their authors no longer felt inspired to write them and were growing bored with their work.

Was Calvin and Hobbes one of the best comics ever? Yes. Was is miserably repetitive near the end and growing more and more unfunny? Sadly, yes. If it had continued on, it would have been nothing but a constant rehash of the same jokes and concepts with no new content... like Peanuts and Garfield both became.

Outland was pretty miserable compared to Bloom County. I have high hopes for 'Opus', but I'm also a realist. It may be just as poor as Outland was, IMHO.

Oh, Mr. Breathed. Two words, 'Web Comic'.

Re:Opus is Back! Now Bring Back Calvin!!!!

[Tofino]

Calvin returned in a film just a couple of years ago...

The comics have always sucked

[w.p.richardson]

in general terms, anyway.

There have usually been a handful of decent comics, with a load of "dogs" as filler. Consider:

Beetle Bailey...
Marmaduke...
Hi & Lois...
Mary Worth...
etc.

These sucked when I was 5 years old, they suck now, and they will still be sucking when I turn 80.

Re:The comics have always sucked

[Valdrax]

I'll chime in with a few of my own:

The Phantom
Nancy

The sad thing is that if you can find books of those two from during their heyday, they were damn good comic strips. With every single comic that has been listed so far, the strip long outlasted the life of their creators, and new artists have come along to prop up their strips' corpses like some sick publishing equivalent of "Weekend at Bernie's." I'm worried that one day someone will try to pick up Peanuts (even though the strip was never as good during its last two decades as it was in the old 60's collections that I have). It's sad enough to see the old strips still being rerun in my local papers rather than let some newcomer take a stab at success.

I'm just glad that Pogo was allowed to retire gracefully and that Bill Watterson will never let Calvin and Hobbes be turned into the sort of undead shadow of itself that all the strips we've listed here have become.

Harry Knowles commenting...

[incompetent_bitch]

Why, oh why, is Harry Knowles commenting on this? Are they just getting anybody who has a semi-popular POS website to comment in in the Washington Post now? Can I get in on the action too? I can create a fake news site, drum up some quotes and get quoted in the Post - woohoo.

Or...

[JoeLinux]

To Clarify...

Less excited here...

[Otter]

As a kid I enjoyed Bloom County, and last year I snapped up a couple of the collections at a yard sale.

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.

Re:Less excited here...

[OWJones]

Bloom County turned out to be just a bunch of tossed-out references to '80's pop culture.

Hmm, let's see here

• A Republican in office: check
• Rampant corporate and investment corruption: check
• A proposed missile-defense system: check
• John Poindexter-concieved schemes being considered/implemented by the government: check

Sounds like 80's culture (and politics) is back "in" these days.

-jdm

The Vanishing Liberal

[RevMike]

Panel 1: Milo and the Major (a retired army major living in the boarding house) are standing in the meadow, dressed in hunting gear. The major is carrying a gun.

Milo: What big game are we stalking today, Major?
Major: Liberals. Check and see what the wildlife guide says about 'em.

Panel 2:

Milo: (reading form the guide) "The Vanishing Liberal: A beast which once thundered across the American Scene in mighty herds. Recently hunted to near extinction."
Major: Gotta be one left around here somewheres... Try the Liberal Call, boy.

Panel 3:

Milo: (shouting) Welfare, Solar Power, No Nukes! ( a nearby bush rustles)

Panel 4: A liberal with bushy hair and mustache, looking much like Reiner on "All in the Family", stands up from behind the bush.

Liberal: No Nukes! No Nukes!

Panel 5: The Major fires his gun at the liberal.

Major: Gotcha!
Liberal: Gun Control! Gun Control!

Panel 6: Liberal can't be seen in tall grass.

Milo: (to the reader) It's a shame.They're more fun than buffalo.
Major: I think I wounded him!
Liberal: Ow! Socialized Medicine! Socialized Medicine!

Re:The Vanishing Liberal

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

Milo: (reading form the guide) "The Vanishing Liberal: A beast which once thundered across the American Scene in mighty herds. Recently hunted to near extinction.
Must be an old guide. They seem to be all over the place now. They propagate like rabbits and they're harder to stamp out than cockroaches. Maybe we need to extend the season ...

Well, not as such.

[burgburgburg]

I would say "Opus waddles again!" would be a more accurate statement.

By the way, because a penguin is the symbol of Linux, this means that Darl is going require a $699 license for every Sunday's strip.

Will this be good?

[SARSpatient]

As I recall, Bloom County started off with a rich cast of characters all centered around the seemingly normal world of a Boarding House. With the cynical young reporter Milo in charge, along with his war-mongering grandfather, the intelligent and supportive Cutter John, Steve Dalls, each was caracature of someone you might know in real life... Just as Bloom County itself was a small town representation of America itself. Back when Opus was merely the pet of wimpy Binkley, who in wanting to impress his father, bought it thinking he was a German Shepherd. Back when Opus was silent, and even resembled a penguine at one point, only uttering the occasional phrase usually having to do with herrings or walruses. As the strip progressed and characters and situations became more and more wild, the original premise was still there. It was still about characters from a small town dealing with current events, politics, science, religion, and pop culture in America. But by the time Bloom County morphed into Outland, at least in my opinion, the environment became too abstract, and the realism of having characters from a small town being thrust into strange and humorous adventures was not there anymore. Outland was based in a universe I couldn't relate to, resembling the 3D land Homer Simpson found himself in while hiding from Patty and Selma one Halloween. I am hoping another rehash of Outland will not be the basis of the new strip. Breathed's comic timing borders on genius, and the new strip needs a deceptively normal setting which made Bloom County and American culture seem all the more strange and twisted and fun.

Daily strips made Bloom County

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

Re:Dysfunctional Family Circus

[elmegil]

No, it was closed down when the guy doing it met Bill Keane and realized what a truly nice guy he was and how awful he felt abusing Bill's work in that way.

Of course, DFC is some of the funniest black humor I've seen, nonetheless. Lucky for me I have some hardcopies and an old T-=shirt.

Re:They used The Onion as a source?

[JabberWokky]

The Washington Post has really gone to the dogs. They actually used The Onion as a source for this article:

I'm guessing you're not aware that the Onion is a real, serious publication, and only the first several pages are humor news. After you get past the first three pages or so, it's all real news (plus some good comics). Their interviews are among the best I've ever read, and their reviews of music are usually better than the typical "it's good, kinda like so-and-so". It's well worth the subscription price - I used to keep it on the back of the toilet, a mark of high regard for a newspaper indeed.

--
Evan

Pretty cool guy. Glad he's back.

[jpellino]

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...