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Opus the Penguin Retired

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yet-garfield-lives-on dept.

garylian writes "Berkeley Breathed has announced that he has drawn the final comic containing the greatest penguin ever, Opus. The author is now going to write children's books. For those of you in your mid-30s and older, you remember Bloom County as a staple of the comic pages in a similar time frame as Calvin & Hobbes, and that time was probably the greatest the daily/Sunday comics have ever known. From running for the vice presidency to impersonating Michael Jackson, from gracing a ton of t-shirts to being one of the weirdest stuffed animals ever, from rocking in a heavy metal band 'Billy and the Boingers' to cleaning up Bill's hair balls, Opus was perfect for that time. And Bloom County would have been perfect during the Bush 2 years. Now, I'm going to pull out all my old Bloom County books and read them. After I dig through some boxes and find my old Opus dolls. I wonder what my kids are going to think of them."

31 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Never fear... by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When Breathed starts running out of money he'll resurrect Opus.

    Just like last time.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    1. Re:Never fear... by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I belong to a generation too young to have appreciated Bloom County. Rather, the first work of Breathed I encountered was Outland, which I thought bizarre, pointless and just downright not funny. If I hadn't come across the Bloom County collection Billy and the Boingers Bootleg at a friend's house (belonging to his cool older brother), I would have never known the comic genius that Breathed could be. Opus has generally felt even less fun than Outland, which shows a sad decline in the cartoonist's art.

      It's remarkable that Bloom County is still so hilarious, when the minutiae of life under the Reagan administration is all but forgotten by readers today, yet a topical strip like Opus is just so meh.

      I wish that he had given up the characters in 1989 at their prime like Bill Watterson was wise to do, instead of continuing them as a source of financial security. It seems like a curse of nerd culture is a flood of sequels that diminishes the impact of the original, quality material. We've seen it with Star Wars, umpteen science fiction novel universes from Dune to Ender's Game, and even the quirky strip that was Bloom County.

    2. Re:Never fear... by gnick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If he had given them up in 1989, we never would have had A Wish For Wings That Work (1991). A X-mas classic in my house, watched every year.

      Would have been tragic.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    3. Re:Never fear... by Directrix1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wish they would resurrect a complete Bloom County collection, instead of just "Opus". I like Opus, but he was just one other character in a great comic.

      --
      Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
    4. Re:Never fear... by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, I think the difference is this. Bloom County was written by a younger, more idealistic, more hopeful man. Outland was written by man who was prone to saying things like "I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners." Yeah, it's funny, but not the kind of thing you look forward to reading over your morning coffee every day.

      Here's the full quote: "Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners." Again, it's funny, but it's not true. The Breathed of Bloom County -- at least the one we see in the strips -- is a fairly standard issue political liberal. The Breathed looking back is somebody who not only thinks government can't work, but thinks thinking government can't work, can't work.

      Charles Schultz's genius gradually petered out over the years, repeating the same jokes over and over. Breathed, having stared his career during the master's twilight, knew that even the great have only so much greatness in them. Certainly not enough to fill out a daily comic every day of the year for an entire lifetime.

      In the final Bloom County strip, the iconic meadow where the characters muse about life is paved over with asphalt. It was a brutally honest way of saying the creative well was running dry. And when Breathed finally did go back to the well, with Outland, and Opus, it wasn't so much that the well was dry, as it had turned bitter.

      I really wish Breathed had Bloom County in him, even if he dribbled it out as a book every couple of years. I wish that Bill Watterson had more Calvin and Hobbes in him. But evidently, they don't. These were personal works, and people change; they move on.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:Never fear... by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah - I read the description of the story and thought to myself "Right, and JK Rowling has written her last 'Harry Potter' book..." Someone else can insert a reference to George Lucas here...

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    6. Re:Never fear... by flappinbooger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bloom County was genius but rooted in the time, sort of a commentary like Doonsbury, but whimsical.

      Calvin and Hobbes is genius as well, but timeless.

      --
      Flappinbooger isn't my real name
    7. Re:Never fear... by operagost · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At least he has the decency to try to retire, unlike Gary Trudeau who keeps cranking out mindless Doonesbury strips only he and Al Franken think are funny.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    8. Re:Never fear... by operagost · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's why I can't read either strip. No insights in either one; just some guy trying to tell me his opinions are righter and funnier than mine. If you want to write political cartoons, write them.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    9. Re:Never fear... by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think Opus (the comic and the character) was the perfect retrospective on Bloom County. It conveyed well the vague sense of 'out of placeness' that many who read Bloom County in it's day now feel. The sense that something has somehow gone very wrong somewhere and the complete lack of an idea what to do about it (if anything).

      All the same, that point is made. At least he has decided not to drag it all out until people just quit reading one by one.

  2. I think I'll go lie down in a field of dandelions by studpuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sniff. -- I'm not crying. I just have something in my eye.

    --
    The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
  3. Meh. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've actually gotten annoyed with BB over the years...What's the point of getting invested in one of his strips? This is what, the third?

    As much as I appreciate a newspaper comic artist who will actually let his strip die when he feels like he's gotten stale, it's irritating when he lets it die, brings it back, lets it die, brings it back, and lets it die THIS TIME FOR REAL I PROMISE!

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    1. Re:Meh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      lets it die, brings it back, lets it die, brings it back, and lets it die THIS TIME FOR REAL I PROMISE!

      So one could call him the Brett Favre of comic strip artists?

    2. Re:Meh. by dwarg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What's the point of getting invested in one of his strips?

      How invested can you be? It's a comic strip. It doesn't cost you anything to read it in the papers, and if you don't have the patience for that you can buy the collected works as they are released in book form.

      I realize some people get really into these things, but I wish they would realize that if every comic strip in America were to disappear one day life would go on unchanged. That people get overly invested in their entertainment is a problem for those people not the artists, athletes, musicians, etc. that create the entertainment.

      It comes down to perspective and knowing the difference between getting what you need vs. getting what you want.

  4. Some Children's Book... by crymeph0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From a photo caption in TFA:

    Breathed's new child's book, Pete & Pickles, features Pete, a lonely pig who vacuums his wife's grave.

    Yeah, I'm gonna run right out and buy that for my toddler. Granted, he says it's not directly mentioned in the text, it's just there in the pictures in case you want to point it out to your kids, but still.

    I guess I shouldn't be too hard on him, since it's not like he's forcing me to buy the book. I just feel like there's a societal obsession with getting our kids to "mature" as fast as possible, rather than just letting them be kids.

    --
    It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    1. Re:Some Children's Book... by OriginalArlen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      there's a societal obsession with getting our kids to "mature" as fast as possible

      Wha'?! By the age of eight I was walking home from school alone, getting lost in the woods behind the old orchard, and I'd seen Star Wars ANH, in which the main father-figure / advisor to the Hiro Protagonist is chopped in half with a laser (how it looked to me at the time!) Nowadays you'd be arrested for child neglect if you leave your kid alone in the house for more than half-an-hour! Come on, if anything it's the opposite way round.

      --

      Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
    2. Re:Some Children's Book... by crymeph0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As far as the freedoms we give them to act on their own, you're right, it's the other way around. I'm talking about what we put in their heads while we have them locked up in their gilded cages, though - a lot of the media we expose them to is highly sexualized and violent, and I feel like I'm just supposed to talk to my daughter until she accepts this as normal, instead of letting her go play in the flowers and be innocent for a while longer.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    3. Re:Some Children's Book... by fitten · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's the rationalization of a helicopter parent. I see too many kids these days who have no clue on how to do anything themselves because parents try to protect them from everything in the world "to preserve their innocence". They don't want their kids to get scraped knees, do anything that might cause even a whisper of pain or anything like that because "modern kids don't need to know those things". Those kids end up not knowing anything or how to deal with any situation that they haven't seen on Barney or Vegetales.

      It's a part of growing up. Don't let your kids do things where they might get their arms chopped off (at least, not without a lot of supervision) but trying to isolate them from scraped knees and knowing what goes on around them (I'm not gonna tell my kids about strangers because it might scare them!) is just bad for them in the long run. Chores and some work doesn't hurt them.

      Being bored just teaches them how to find things to do, it won't kill them. I used to read encyclopedias when I got bored, for example, or play games or go out and explore the woods behind our house. I get bored very rarely (not even once a year that I can think of) because there are so many things to do as long as you take an active part in your life. If you're dependent upon someone else supplying you with things to do (watching TV, playing video games, having to always be hanging around other people), you'll always be easily bored because you've never had to supply your own activities. Teach your kids to be confident and instill in them that curiosity and inquisitiveness is good. Let them stumble on their own sometimes even though you know it will happen. They'll learn from it (and not resent you for not protecting them).

      But, putting your kids in a gilded cage definitely will have issues down the line, like always wanting someone else to be their nanny for the rest of their life, for example.

  5. two months by Speare · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Loved Bloom County but it was stuck in time. I think I paid attention to Berkeley Breathed for about two months after he ended Bloom County. I read a couple Outland strips. Even Berkeley must have realized they sucked, because he had to save it by reintroducing Opus and friends, which he had announced he didn't want to do. But it still sucked. Other than reading someone's Bloom County anthology, and smiling with the fond memory, I haven't looked at them since.

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
    1. Re:two months by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed, big-time. It was like the 1980's and early '90s never ended in there... I loved it when it was out, but nowadays, it seems pretty irrelevant.

      In spite of its subtle politics, it was damned funny. The politicking he employed was more of a scalpel (far better than the blatant dull machete' that was Doonesbury) which is what made you read Bloom County no matter what your politics were - and even if you were a staunch neocon, you laughed your ass off at it.

      Then again, it lacks that timelessness which Calvin and Hobbes has. I have a shedload of Calvin and Hobbes books on the shelves... OTOH, I can't remember owning any Bloom County books since 1993 (I'd lost the ones I had when the apartment got flooded... never really bothered to replace them - I really should head out and get a few just to take me back).

      C&H is a never-ending fountain of laughs (in spite of the moronic and seemingly never-ending 'calvin pissing on $object' car sticker derivatives). Bloom County OTOH is (sadly) a time capsule.

      /P

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:two months by snspdaarf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. I tried to like Outland, but it just was not a good strip. Sticking Opus in it did not help. It was only a reminder that this was not Bloom County. And, the Opus strip, well, when the writer resorts to "and now, a character's lovechild shows up", it means there is a problem. TV, comics, serial novels, it means the same thing. The well is running dry.

      --
      Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
  6. Favorite Bloom County punchline ... by Coreigh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Pear pimples for hairy fish nuts?"

    Aside from any reasons that may be brought up to be annoyed with Breathed, his comics or his politics, Opus and Bloom County made me laugh HYSTERICALLY at things I did not even understand or knew I should be aware of. That is what I think makes a good comic or cartoon. A mix of simple funny and satire can bring smiles to both those in the know and those who just like to watch.

    Coreigh

    --



    "Waitress I need two more boat-drinks..."
  7. Like Groening, let it go on WAY past its prime by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bloom County was probably the best comic strip of the 80's. And, when Breathed started to lose steam, he ended it.

    But he didn't, really. He just cut it back to Sundays under a new name. And so that pattern has continued until the series had long since become stale and forgettable. The once-great Bloom County was reduced to a great big pile of who-gives-a-shit.

    Sometimes, if you love something, you have to let it go. Better that it dies a dignified death than to drag it on into mediocrity. Matt Groening and Berkley Breathed are, sadly, prime examples of guys who had something truly magical, which they then beat into the ground for decades past when they should have called it quits.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Like Groening, let it go on WAY past its prime by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At least Matt Groening can say that he gave control of The Simpsons over to a staff of writers. Berke Breathed is responsible for the declining quality of the franchise all by himself.

  8. Bloom County doesn't hold up well by jayayeem · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I went back and read some Bloom County books recently. They are as dated as Doonesbury from the early 70s. Not that the weren't great, but they were a product of their time.

    Read your Calvin and Hobbes books instead. Those are timeless. My kids love them.

    --
    I metamoderate, therefore I am
    1. Re:Bloom County doesn't hold up well by swordgeek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wouldn't say that being stuck in time doesn't mean they don't hold up well. Bloom County, like Doonesbury and Pogo before that, were satire and sociopolitical commentary. They don't have much choice but to become dated when politicians retire, events are forgotten, and society moves on. It's a different style, that's all. Social cartoons become dated. Their counterpart (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts) don't.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  9. Now... by sl8r · · Score: 1, Insightful

    if only Mallard Fillmore would get the boot, that'd be great.

  10. I have fond memories of Opus... by BarneyRabble · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know about the rest of you Slashdotters, but I have fond memories of reading the newspaper every day to see what kind of mischief Opus and the gang in Bloom County were going to do next, such as putting Bill Gates brain inside of Bill the Cat...and Opus getting a nose job. But the best one was the first time we all met him...encountering a Hare Krishna....with the "Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts" reply. Go back in time. Remember a time when politcal humor was meant to be funny and not crass and callous as it is today with people like Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart. Berke Breathed poked fun at situations, he didn't rattle the bear's cage all the time. And as for his children's books, he has made a couple of cute ones, such as "Red Rider Came Calling" and "The Last Bassalope" and one of my personal faves, "Edward Fudwupper Fibbed Big", a story about one child's lie that can cause big trouble. So its sad to see Opus go. He can have a Herrring Whopper on me, heavy mayo :)

  11. I remember Bloom County by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm old enough to remember Bloom County (and the Far Side, for that matter) - it was a wonderful, funny, insightful, different comic strip.

    Unfortunately Opus (the comic) never really fired on all cylinders. Breathed tried to do something a bit different, but it just didn't quite work. Then, when he came to realize that, he started trying to drag back a few of the Bloom County regulars; but without young Milo it just couldn't work.

    I think Breathed would've been better served - as would we fans - if he'd just resurrected Bloom County the same way Trudeau did with Doonesbury. It's a comic - so there's no rule you have to age your characters in real time. (Although some of us would prefer Bil Keane did exactly that, since it'd mean little Billy would've retired years ago).

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  12. We did have it good in the 80's. by Hawthorne01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bloom County. The Far Side. Calvin & Hobbes.

    And Zippy the Pinhead for those into, ah, more chemically-induced forms of humor.

    But now we have web comics. And the golden age of comic strips is with us once again.

    The comic strip is dead. Long live the comic strip.

    --
    "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
  13. Opt Out by mpapet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Warning: Rant from a crazy parent.

    lot of the media we expose them to is highly sexualized and violent

    Which is exactly why we sold our TV when our daughter was very young. We are all better off for buying a 12" TV that stayed in a cabinet. This is much harder for adults than it is for the kids. Until you do it for a few months, you won't understand.

    Discontinue the cable and stick that money in the bank.

    Is she some kind of Amish freak? No. She watches enough TV at her friends house and then comes home and complains that it wasn't fun.

    and I feel like I'm just supposed to talk to my daughter until she accepts this as normal

    It may be all around us, but it isn't normal or appropriate for children. Most adults just get passive about it and use some kind of complicated thinking to call PBS kids shows "good TV." TV is crack for kids. It's passive gratification and flashing pictures. Stick to your guns on this issue and change your way of living. Getting rid of the TV is a great start.

    --
    http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html