A respected artist is out of the game for a number of years, and returns to his medium to much fanfare. The results are met with no small amount of derision.
I could be talking about Terence Malick's "The Thin Red Line," but I'm actually referring to the debut of Berke Breathed's Opus.
After reading a good deal of the criticism being leveled, I can't say I'm too sure what everyone's bitching about. Breathed's been out of the game eight years, and maybe his return to the land of penguin lust and "herring Whopper sans bun" wasn't as momentous as some were hoping, but come on. I'm as much a Bloom County fan as the next guy, and if Opus doesn't start giving with the laughs it'll be a shame, but I'm willing to give Breathed some time to regain his sea legs.
Can't say I agree with the man's decision not to put the new strips online, however. Good thing for scanners.
I always liked Opus. And as far as I'm concerned, The Thin Red Line was superb... assuming you were on peyote.
It's really beyond the pale to have a link titled "scanners" which leads to no exploding heads. In a blog of a movie-column-writing-guy, no less. Hang your head in shame!
>>I think it's ludicrous to criticize him based entirely on the FIRST STRIP, though. That would have been like walking out of The Thin Red Line after 2 minutes and saying, "Well, there's ONE director I'm never going to watch again."
That analogy might work better if you had to pay to see each 2 minutes of the movie.
You're right. What I should have said was, "Unless you are criticizing the strip on a purely economic basis, for providing a bad value proposition considering the inconvenient delivery mechanism it uses, I think it's ludicrous..."
There's also the problem with the strip being very badly written and drawn. Based on the first two weeks, at least. I'm sure he'll pull it together eventually.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Brethed do something like this before? I seem to recall that he came out of semi-retirement to launch "Outland," another Sunday-only strip. Also, I recall that it took a while for "Outland" to get back up to "Bloom County" level (i.e., to bring back Steve Dallas and Bill the Cat).
So is he playing in MacGruder's court or did MacGruder step on his 'Jean Kirkpatrick" shoes a while back?
If they were webcomics, they'd have a crossover or a forum-feud. Or both.
As long as he's doing a Sunday-only strip, he's going to get criticized more than he really deserves. A hit counts for 1 day of not sucking, but a miss counts for 13 days of suck.
I think it's ludicrous to criticize him based entirely on the FIRST STRIP, though. That would have been like walking out of The Thin Red Line after 2 minutes and saying, "Well, there's ONE director I'm never going to watch again."