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The question is, does anybody care that an occasionally cranky "stripper" is going back to work?

If not, they should. As Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money was, it should never be forgotten that the comics page is where the readers are. For all of the astounding changes in the media, there are, according to an estimate by the Metro-Puck Comics Network, an advertising agency that represents about 200 national newspapers, still somewhere in the vicinity of 105 million people reading the comics pages on a given Sunday.

"The newspaper funny page [is] a great American story in itself," Breathed remarked to Editor and Publisher upon "Outland's" retirement in 1995, "shrunken in size and buffeted by new technology, still bravely resisting its own ending." It has been a slow decline since the Golden Age of the early 20th century, when surreal masters like Winsor McKay ("Little Nemo in Slumberland") and George Herriman ("Krazy Kat") reigned over vast expanses of newsprint to a broad audience.

Since then, strips' space on the page has been consistently decreased as newspaper readership has shrunk. With few notable exceptions, such as Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks" and Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury (from which Breathed occasionally cribbed in his early years), most strips could have been written at any point in the past 50 years. This year, "Doonesbury" and Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's "Zits" caused industry stirs by using the words "masturbation" and "sucks," respectively, in their strips -- boundaries crossed years ago, to say the least, in most other popular mediums.

"Kids and adults and everybody see and hear candid words on cable and in magazines, on the Web," says Dave Astor, the features columnist for Editor and Publisher. "I think papers are much too cautious. The reason they give is that kids read the comics." Though the term "family-oriented" is frequently applied to the medium, according to the Metro-Puck figures the 105 million comics readers break down into 75 million adults, 17 million teens and 13 million children between the ages of six and 12.

Comics not only seem a flashback to an earlier morality, but an earlier sensibility. In a relentlessly self-reflective culture, comics remain resolutely straightforward: an end node with few links back to the outside world. The Sunday pages continue to be dominated by serialized adventures ("Annie," "Prince Valiant"), simple family foibles ("Out of the Gene Pool," "1 Big Happy"), and wryly talking pets ("Heathcliff," "Get Fuzzy"). A "Gilligan's Island" reference in "The Lockhorns" passes for intertextuality.

From production (hand-drawn and inked) to distribution (via massive centralized newspaper syndicates), the whole industry feels like it belongs to an earlier epoch. In a recent Editor and Publisher column, Astor profiled the traveling salesmen who still make the bread-and-butter sales for the comics syndicates. His descriptions of sample-laden satchels and hustled deals can only strike the modern reader as weirdly romantic.

But business is no place for nostalgia. When Breathed retired "Outland" in 1995, David Shearer of the Washington Post Writers Group -- Breathed's syndicate -- expressed some remorse over the fate of the strips' sizes. "I'd like to see comics displayed bigger. We all would. But that's not the reality of it," he said, pointing toward electronic media as a place for artists to experiment. Ironically, with Breathed's return, the WPWG is using that missed experimentation as a selling point. "The one and the only place to see 'Opus' will be in newspapers," Shearer says. "This is a tremendous opportunity to increase circulation."

For his part, as mentioned above, Breathed is demanding half a page for his bird. "We heard a little bit of grumbling from some editors who thought it was too much space," says Suzanne Whelton, Breathed's editor at WPPG, "but once they saw the artwork, they were all easily convinced that it was deserving of that kind of space. He's really honed his talents as a painter over the past years. It really has a more painterly look than 'Outland' or 'Bloom County.'"

"I don't think a half-page 'Opus' is going to have a big impact," Astor says sadly. "In the early '90s, Bill Watterson, who did 'Calvin and Hobbes,' had the clout to do a half-page on Sundays. It didn't really change anything. It didn't lead to other comics doing that. It didn't lead to an expansion of the comics section. Sunday papers who wanted to get 'Calvin and Hobbes' knocked out one or two other strips."

Or, typically, they shrunk them -- both of which some editors have already announced they will do to make room for 'Opus.' In that sense, Breathed might be considered a mercy killer -- the suicidal stripper come to slam his foot and force others back down the inkwell whence they oozed. Given Breathed's occasionally adversarial tone, it's hard not to read his actions as those of a vigilante guardian.

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From: Berkeley Breathed
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2003, 7:08 PM
Subject: Re: salon interview

> Was having more space to play with a condition of your return?
> Do you think you deserve more space than other strips? Or is this
> an attempt to encourage other strippers to demand the same?

Strips are in the tiny size and proportion that you see now to allow editors flexibility to cut the boxes apart and rearrange in psychedelic patterns all over their kitchen ceilings if they want, I guess. Bill Watterson halted this graphic slide toward nothingness several years into his strip ... and the editors screamed, but went along for the most part. They thought it was safely behind them until we offered them "Opus" in only one size.

Would I like to see other strips run similarly? Good God, yes ... if anyone bothers to put the work into the drawings. My drawings are going to be fun to look at or I'm going to get bored. And if readers want to see what bored cartoonists produce, take a look at much of the page. Actually, some are so bored, they're actually dead. That's another issue.

> It's upsetting editors, but has it caused any major setbacks? Are enough
> papers picking up the strip?

We'll be in all the major markets. But the size issue will initially keep us out of the majority of the nation's newspapers unless the readers make a fuss. Boy, I'd hate to see that happen. I'd hate to see readers force editors to eliminate the comic strips marketed by corporations, widows and distant relatives long after their deceased creators pass on. What would happen to all the hacks hired by Jim Davis to write and draw "Garfield" if we were to put it out of business? Remember what they did to Mel Gibson at the end of "Braveheart"? There's an idea.

> That said, would it be your wish to cause ripples?

As an end, controversy is a dead end. It's why TV shows tried to throw in nudity some years ago. I notice now that the ripples de jour are lesbian kisses. It's a sign of desperation, not good writing. Not to say that if I could figure out a way to throw in some hot lesbian action into "Opus," I wouldn't.

> Do you have a sense of mission with your return? Do you feel you have
> something to prove or accomplish?

There ain't no going home again. That truth burns with a vengeance on the comic page as in does in other popular entertainment. "Bloom County" had its perfect, temporary moment during the '80s ... the only moment it would have ever flourished. My goal now is to simply have some fun -- and I never really did before, oddly. If I can encourage other artists to have some fun too ... then that's about as big a mission as I'd want to claim. Actually being alive and aboveground is also an asset I'd like to encourage in more of today's strip cartoonists.

> You haven't read the daily comics page in a while, but I was curious if you
> followed those comics that attempt to bridge the gap between the daily paper
> and the Op-Ed section (and usually end up running in alt-weeklies), such as
> Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World," David Rees' "Get Your War On," etc.?

I'd hate to see the funnies become a de facto editorial page, frankly. But you see more raw energy and passion in the strips that you mentioned than you would in the next 200 years of "Garfield" strips, which -- by the way -- have already been written by Jim Davis' staff.

> Is it possible for the comics page to ever regain the sweeping popularity it
> enjoyed at its peak?

Well, we won't know it if the page is forever filled with "Peanuts" reruns from 1957 and those undying vixens from "Apartment 3G," will we? Housecleaning time, girls!

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