Berkely Breathed interview

I miss Opus already.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/10/18/opus/index.html

A highlight (or maybe a lowlight):

"Bloom County" had five times the edge of the work I do now. In 1986 I had a cockroach scream, "Reagan sucks!" in print size that took up the entire cartoon box. Nobody blinked -- 1,000 newspapers, quiet as a mouse. Now I draw a woman wearing a Muslim scarf, and the frantic publisher of the Washington Post Co. is on the phone at 9 p.m. telling me -- I am not making this up -- to adjust my character's hair so she doesn't look too unkempt.

Fear doesn't so much rule the wood pulp news industry. More like pee-on-themselves existential terror.

I will miss the crinkly mass of pressed dead tree held aloft over my Caesar salad and iced tea at the corner cafe.

-------

(A minor point, but his memory fails him on the "Reagan sucks!" strip. Dave Barry wrote a column about how the Miami Herald didn't run that strip but wrote stories quoting it to explain why they didn't run it.)

 

Opus was a puffin, not a penguin!!
Is there a compilation of just the Opus cartoons out yet?
I've got the Bloom County and Outland books.

 

Oh. I thought this was about Elizabeth Berkley. [/mikey]

 

Actually, I want to say he mentioned a few papers dropping the strip outright, not running that day's or at least raising an issue about it. It was one of my favorite days -- the cockney-talking cockroach doing fill-in work for one of the main characters, being told to say something subtle and witty for the punchline, then firing off REAGAN SUCKS as the payoff. Pitch perfect and flawlessly timed.

Much as I loved Bloom County and liked Outland, Opus was a classic case of beating a dead penguin. I suspect in 2013 he'll debut the web comic O.

 

I like turtles.

 

I absolutely loved "Bloom County." Hated "Outland." Saw "Opus" maybe twice.

So based on that interview, what are the odds it ends with Opus somehow climbing into "Peanuts"?

 

Sorry, Opus. Snoopy has the whimsical animal character market cornered . . . forever.

 

My paper dropped Bloom County after the "Reagan Sucks" strip.

 

Final strip -- huh?

 

I did. Screw you guys.

 

Goodnight Opus

http://www.hsus.org/forms/the_opus_contest.html

 

So was Opus the strip a dream? Was everything from the first Bloom County a dream? Is that Suzanne Pleshette in the bed with him?