Berke Breathed to return to the funny pages? Looks like it's going to happen, according to the Washington Post:
After eight years away from newspapers, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called "Opus," starring his beloved penguin of the same name.
The Washington Post Writers Group, which will syndicate the strip, is expected to officially announce Breathed's return this Sunday. The reclusive Breathed, who rarely gives interviews, could not be reached yesterday for comment.
The new strip will appear on Sundays in The Washington Post starting Nov. 23.
As huge a Bloom County fan as I am, I have mixed feelings about this news. I thought Breathed did the right thing leaving when he did, as the strips were becoming increasingly...well...unfunny. He dropped the satire in favor of broad jokes and went from nice line art in BC to the Seussian surreality of Outland. If he can bring back the same sense of whimsy his earlier strip showcased, I'll definitely be on board. It just seems that his views have become too strident for that.
At the National Cartoonists Society meeting this May, [Breathed] seemed itching to return to his old broadsheet format.
"I can't say it wouldn't be appealing to bring back Opus to the Sunday pages," Breathed told those gathered, according to Editor & Publisher. "It was painful to sit through the war without a public voice."
And it'll be more painful to sit through Opus if it ends up as an "issue comic." Bloom County was topical, but never wholly political. That was one of its strengths.
Its cast was another. Please tell me there will be appearances by Steve Dallas, Milo, Portnoy, Oliver, Cutter John, and of course, Bill T. Cat.
Of course, the internet's resident sub-literate corporate shill has to chime in as well:
"It's one of those strips that, when it left the comic pages, the comic pages were quite a bit lesser for its absence," says 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."
Leaving aside the fact that Harry Knowles somehow manages to be an avid fan of anything once it regains the spotlight, of the three strips he mentions, only Calvin and Hobbes left at the top of its game. BC was sinking into impenetrability, and the Far Side was on its way to becoming another Close to Home.
All the same, I miss Peanuts more than the three of them combined.