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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
"Bloom County" cartoonist Berkeley Breathed talks about bringing Opus back to the nation's comics page to rip Garfield (and maybe George Bush) a new one.
Nov 20, 2003 | Hard facts about Berkeley Breathed are scarce. At signings for his children's books, his only public appearances besides engagements at animal rights rallies, he seems genial. But, then, so did Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and he was a notorious son of a bitch. Their faces arrange themselves in similar ways, too, mustaches hovering over instantly familiar smiles, and you can easily imagine either one stooping to speak warmly with a young admirer. It is clear, at any rate, that no matter what he might think of anything else, Breathed loves animals and children.
They have populated his work almost exclusively since the early days of "Bloom County," his wildly successful daily comic strip that ran from 1980 through 1989, earning him a 1987 Pulitzer Prize. They roamed the fantastically florid hills of "Outland," a Sunday-only "Bloom County" spinoff that ran from 1989 to 1995. And they are the main protagonists of the six lushly illustrated children's books he has published since then.
They will almost certainly also inhabit "Opus," Breathed's latest venture, a Sunday strip set to launch Nov. 23 in 160 newspapers nationwide. In an indication of the reader appeal Breathed is still believed to command, he has demanded (and received) guarantees that each newspaper running the strip will give him half a page in the comics section, something no cartoonist has received since Bill Watterson retired "Calvin and Hobbes."
Opus first appears on Page 30 of the "Bloom County Babylon" anthology, as the neurosis-addled Michael Binkley announces to his father that he has adopted a "manly dog."
"Great Scott," his father exclaims. "That's a penguin."
"Is it?" Binkley responds, whirling to examine the bow-tied blob that has waddled into the frame. "Oh dear."
The next day, watching "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Opus has his first speaking role. "Can you say 'tuba player'?" the television host asks his audience.
"Tuphlem grdlphump," Opus responds proudly.
"Good!" chirps Mister Rogers, from inside the box.
A few strips later, Opus had learned to speak. In the coming years Opus would develop with striking versatility, first as a foil to Binkley and friends, and later as a uniquely vulnerable low-status flightless waterfowl who among other things ran for vice president (his running mate: a dead cat named Bill), played sousaphone in a heavy metal band called Deathtongue, and ventured periodically to Antarctica in quest of his mother. His nose developed, too, from an angular beak to a truly whimsical schnoz.
What made the strips remarkable was the way Breathed effortlessly intertwined graphic ideas, concepts and gags. He regularly broke the fourth wall (or, in this case, the fifth panel), as when his characters threatened to strike if their space on the page was shrunk again. "Bloom County's" absurdity meant that it seemed to melt the boundaries between the comics and the rest of the paper, broaching issues not traditionally associated with even the most experimental or political strips.
Since retiring "Outland," the reclusive Breathed has devoted his time to fatherhood, work on his children's books, and various other projects. In the past several years, Breathed has only granted sporadic e-mail interviews, including an uproarious exchange with the Onion in the summer of 2001 in which he compared comics to "the buggy whips of this millennium: quaint and eclipsed," admitting only a "nostalgic twinge" for the medium.
As he prepared "Opus" for its maiden voyage, he agreed to communicate electronically with Salon from the Southern California home he shares with his wife and two children.
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From: Berkeley Breathed
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2003, 1:51 AM
Subject: Fwd: salon interview
> Last we heard from you, via the Onion interview a few years back,
> the odds of you ever doing a strip again seemed pretty slim
> (to put it mildly). What changed?
The world went and got silly again. I left in 1995 with things properly, safely dull, and couldn't imagine why anyone would feel it necessary again to start behaving ridiculously. It would have been at least courteous of the Republicans to warn a few of us inclined to retire our ink-swords that they had King George waiting in his zoom-zoom jetsuit aching to start the Crusades again.
> What are the advantages of a Sunday-only strip?
In my case, having a life. Ever see a seven-day-a-week cartoonist?
They all look like Keith Richards at 5 a.m. I've said that cartooning, like education and sex, is wasted on the young ... but I understand why it's that way. It's wearing, corrosive, killing work. Consider Charles Schulz. Look where he is today.
> Again, in the Onion interview, you claimed that it was no longer possible to
> satirize American politics. In the past two years, the (visible) political landscape
> has changed considerably. Do you still believe it's impossible to satirize?
I think there's both a saturation point and a failure point in events being beyond satire. I started stripping in 1981, the same month that MTV started. Daily satirical comment was either "Doonesbury" or "The Tonight Show." The horizon was clear. We had the whole playing field. You young punks just try to imagine that there wasn't even a World Wide Web. Michael Jackson jokes passed as edgy comedy in "Bloom County."
Now. Lord, now. The din of public snarkiness is stupefying. We're awash in a vomitous sea of caustic humorous comment. I hope to occasionally wade near the black hole of pop references only obliquely without getting sucked in with everyone else. Full disclosure: I'll admit that I had a momentary lapse and recently inked a strip where Opus' mom sees a picture of Michael Jackson in 1983, proclaims Jacko's old nose irresistible and voices an urgent wish to nibble it off down to the nub.
It took every thoughtful middle-aged fiber in my being for the courage to toss the finished strip. I did, but I wept.
Now the flip side of this is when events get untouchable. It becomes like the occasional lampoons of supermarket tabloids: unfunny because they're mocking something that's funnier than the satire. You can't effectively satirize Bill Clinton getting waxed by an office vixen in the office of Abraham Lincoln. It's done. Over. Go home. Know when you're beat. It almost was physically painful to watch the great Garry Trudeau have to try to get a handle on it.
> What was your comic reading experience like as a child?
None. I'm sorry, I don't know how else to put this. I watched "Wild Wild West" and collected snakes.
> Would you let your daughter anywhere near a modern comics page?
Not without those magnifying glasses you buy at the counter of Thrifty-Mart.
Your question brought me briefly back to the old days. There was a time in that hazy, sunny morning time in a bygone innocent America when a slightly off-color "Bloom County" or "Doonesbury" would hit the comic pages and the nation's ministers would proclaim the funnies as ground zero on the cultural battleground for the morals of our youth.
Now it's the sale rack of thongs for preschoolers at J.C. Penney. Even with "Boondocks," the comics don't even cause a ripple on the moral Zeitgeist anymore. This speaks poorly of where the comic page is today, by the way ... which speaks volumes about why we're bringing Opus back and why we're demanding a half-page. Things have simply gotten far too bleak.
> Opus has existed in several mediums now -- two comic strips, as well as
> children's books, and an animated cartoon. Did transferring him to other
> mediums require you to reimagine the character at all?
Yes, regrettably. His personality often served at the mercy of the joke or story that needed telling. This makes for funny gags sometimes ... but not good writing. After 15 years, I honestly didn't think I had a handle on my marquee character: He was a cipher. Suddenly I've found myself curious as to what really makes him tick. I plan to explore. Or at least after we're done transforming him into "To Kill a Mockingbird" for some real money.
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