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Opus the Penguin Retired
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 09, 2008 08:23 AM
from the yet-garfield-lives-on dept.
from the yet-garfield-lives-on dept.
garylian writes "Berkeley Breathed has announced that he has drawn the final comic containing the greatest penguin ever, Opus. The author is now going to write children's books. For those of you in your mid-30s and older, you remember Bloom County as a staple of the comic pages in a similar time frame as Calvin & Hobbes, and that time was probably the greatest the daily/Sunday comics have ever known. From running for the vice presidency to impersonating Michael Jackson, from gracing a ton of t-shirts to being one of the weirdest stuffed animals ever, from rocking in a heavy metal band 'Billy and the Boingers' to cleaning up Bill's hair balls, Opus was perfect for that time. And Bloom County would have been perfect during the Bush 2 years. Now, I'm going to pull out all my old Bloom County books and read them. After I dig through some boxes and find my old Opus dolls. I wonder what my kids are going to think of them."
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Never fear... (Score:5, Insightful)
When Breathed starts running out of money he'll resurrect Opus.
Just like last time.
Re:Never fear... (Score:5, Insightful)
I belong to a generation too young to have appreciated Bloom County. Rather, the first work of Breathed I encountered was Outland, which I thought bizarre, pointless and just downright not funny. If I hadn't come across the Bloom County collection Billy and the Boingers Bootleg [amazon.com] at a friend's house (belonging to his cool older brother), I would have never known the comic genius that Breathed could be. Opus has generally felt even less fun than Outland, which shows a sad decline in the cartoonist's art.
It's remarkable that Bloom County is still so hilarious, when the minutiae of life under the Reagan administration is all but forgotten by readers today, yet a topical strip like Opus is just so meh.
I wish that he had given up the characters in 1989 at their prime like Bill Watterson was wise to do, instead of continuing them as a source of financial security. It seems like a curse of nerd culture is a flood of sequels that diminishes the impact of the original, quality material. We've seen it with Star Wars, umpteen science fiction novel universes from Dune to Ender's Game, and even the quirky strip that was Bloom County.
Parent
Re:Never fear... (Score:4, Insightful)
If he had given them up in 1989, we never would have had A Wish For Wings That Work [imdb.com] (1991). A X-mas classic in my house, watched every year.
Would have been tragic.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A creative idea catches fire.
The business plan then becomes: stretch and 'repurpose content', flogging the same shtick until people want to kick it to the curb.
The final outcome: people are sick to death of it, all possible variants of the original idea are bereft of any fun at all, and it's buh-bye for everyone, after Volume 12.
In the interim, interesting ideas go away for wont of creative entrepreneurship or just the ability to get in front of a fresh audience. Ah, the wonders of modern capitalism.
Re:Never fear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I think the difference is this. Bloom County was written by a younger, more idealistic, more hopeful man. Outland was written by man who was prone to saying things like "I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners." Yeah, it's funny, but not the kind of thing you look forward to reading over your morning coffee every day.
Here's the full quote: "Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners." Again, it's funny, but it's not true. The Breathed of Bloom County -- at least the one we see in the strips -- is a fairly standard issue political liberal. The Breathed looking back is somebody who not only thinks government can't work, but thinks thinking government can't work, can't work.
Charles Schultz's genius gradually petered out over the years, repeating the same jokes over and over. Breathed, having stared his career during the master's twilight, knew that even the great have only so much greatness in them. Certainly not enough to fill out a daily comic every day of the year for an entire lifetime.
In the final Bloom County strip, the iconic meadow where the characters muse about life is paved over with asphalt. It was a brutally honest way of saying the creative well was running dry. And when Breathed finally did go back to the well, with Outland, and Opus, it wasn't so much that the well was dry, as it had turned bitter.
I really wish Breathed had Bloom County in him, even if he dribbled it out as a book every couple of years. I wish that Bill Watterson had more Calvin and Hobbes in him. But evidently, they don't. These were personal works, and people change; they move on.
Parent
Re:Never fear... (Score:4, Informative)
I guess I'm showing my own age here, but I went to college with Berke at the University of Texas in Austin, way back in the ancient history of the 1980s. We'd often bump into each other at the College of Communication. I was a film major (Radio-TV-Film, to be exact) and he was a photojournalism major. At that time, he was drawing a strip for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, entitled "The Academia Waltz." It featured a self-centered frat boy named Steve Dallas (whom you'll all remember later moved to Bloom County), his unnamed but eloquent dog and his girlfriend, who started out as an airheaded sorority girl who awakened one day with a political conscience and became a wildly left-wing liberal arts major who decided that sleeping with her professor to pass a class was a lot easier than studying.
Berke could make a lot more money just by taking those old strips and putting together a new anthology, as the biting wit of Bloom County was in its early stages back then. But like you say, he changed and moved on, and probably doesn't even like those old strips that I recall so fondly.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Calvin and Hobbes is genius as well, but timeless.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Never fear... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that was the problem with his Opus strip. A previous comment mentioned how much more he liked the old Bloom County strips. The difference was that Berkley stripped out most of the other characters except for Steve and Bill the Cat (who doesn't talk). That left Opus alone in most of the situations with no other supporting characters. In the Bloom Country strips there was a series of regular characters who all had the focus on them at some point. That created a much more complex cartoon "universe" whereas Opus alone had no one to play off of and sounded like a single note enventually. I don't know why Berkley dropped most of the other characters, there really was no good reason for it.
The same thing happened to the cast of Seinfeld, they were much better playing off each other. Once the show ended and they tried to make shows with themselves as the focus they seemed like they were adrift and bland.
Parent
Re:Never fear... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Opus (the comic and the character) was the perfect retrospective on Bloom County. It conveyed well the vague sense of 'out of placeness' that many who read Bloom County in it's day now feel. The sense that something has somehow gone very wrong somewhere and the complete lack of an idea what to do about it (if anything).
All the same, that point is made. At least he has decided not to drag it all out until people just quit reading one by one.
Parent
The only thing I can think to say is... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Quoting the Poet (Score:3, Interesting)
Like jasper wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
Like those of Caspar Weinberger."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoiler alert (Score:5, Funny)
Breathed already has tentative plans to bring the penguin back in a short feature about discovering a certain country in Europe. It will be called "Mr. Opus's Holland [imdb.com].
Parent
Mod Parent Troll/Flamebait (Score:5, Funny)
Using "greatest penguin ever" on a site with this many Linux users is asking for trouble.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Not to mention all the Tennessee Tuxedo fans, who are not going to be happy about it either.
Re:Mod Parent Troll/Flamebait (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, wrong site - You want AARP [aarp.org], not Slashdot.
Easy mistake, no doubt you arrived here from a misspelled Google search for "ARPA".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention all the Tennessee Tuxedo fans, who are not going to be happy about it either.
Don Adams, we miss you!
Opus retires? Dood! (Score:2)
It's a sad day, dood. Think he'll join up soon?
Re: (Score:2)
(I don't know how to put the 2 dots over u...)
I believe this was the band before Billy and the Boingers....must more of a metal group for Opus and Bill the Cat.
Re:Opus retires? Dood! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it was the same band; they got dragged to one of those Tipper Gore congressional hearings and Steve (the manager) eventually caved to congressional pressure on censorship and decency and changed the bands name from "Deathtongue" to "Billy and the Boingers"
(That story arc is a must for people who are against censorship; throughout the whole bit Tipper Gore keeps screaming "Off with their heads" whenever anyone does anything offensive, and through out there are quoted sections of purported Deathtongue songs with such memorable names as "Love Rhino")
Parent
I think I'll go lie down in a field of dandelions (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've actually gotten annoyed with BB over the years...What's the point of getting invested in one of his strips? This is what, the third?
As much as I appreciate a newspaper comic artist who will actually let his strip die when he feels like he's gotten stale, it's irritating when he lets it die, brings it back, lets it die, brings it back, and lets it die THIS TIME FOR REAL I PROMISE!
Re: (Score:2)
ROFL!! What an absolutely TRUE statement!!
Some Children's Book... (Score:5, Insightful)
From a photo caption in TFA:
Breathed's new child's book, Pete & Pickles, features Pete, a lonely pig who vacuums his wife's grave.
Yeah, I'm gonna run right out and buy that for my toddler. Granted, he says it's not directly mentioned in the text, it's just there in the pictures in case you want to point it out to your kids, but still.
I guess I shouldn't be too hard on him, since it's not like he's forcing me to buy the book. I just feel like there's a societal obsession with getting our kids to "mature" as fast as possible, rather than just letting them be kids.
Re:Some Children's Book... (Score:5, Insightful)
there's a societal obsession with getting our kids to "mature" as fast as possible
Wha'?! By the age of eight I was walking home from school alone, getting lost in the woods behind the old orchard, and I'd seen Star Wars ANH, in which the main father-figure / advisor to the Hiro Protagonist is chopped in half with a laser (how it looked to me at the time!) Nowadays you'd be arrested for child neglect if you leave your kid alone in the house for more than half-an-hour! Come on, if anything it's the opposite way round.
Parent
Re:Some Children's Book... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the freedoms we give them to act on their own, you're right, it's the other way around. I'm talking about what we put in their heads while we have them locked up in their gilded cages, though - a lot of the media we expose them to is highly sexualized and violent, and I feel like I'm just supposed to talk to my daughter until she accepts this as normal, instead of letting her go play in the flowers and be innocent for a while longer.
Parent
Opt Out (Score:3, Insightful)
Warning: Rant from a crazy parent.
lot of the media we expose them to is highly sexualized and violent
Which is exactly why we sold our TV when our daughter was very young. We are all better off for buying a 12" TV that stayed in a cabinet. This is much harder for adults than it is for the kids. Until you do it for a few months, you won't understand.
Discontinue the cable and stick that money in the bank.
Is she some kind of Amish freak? No. She watches enough TV at her friends house and then comes home
Re:Some Children's Book... (Score:4, Interesting)
That reminds me this wonderful little map of Sheffield, Britain, with "allowed to roam" overlays: http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_02/playgraphicDM1406_736x800.jpg [dailymail.co.uk]
Each overlay shows where the eight year old child was allowed to cover unsupervised. Sad how much more constricted and hemmed in each generation of that family has become over the last century.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm gonna run right out and buy that for my toddler. Granted, he says it's not directly mentioned in the text, it's just there in the pictures in case you want to point it out to your kids, but still.
It's really no more "out there" than some of the imagery in classics from Maurice Sendak or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
My problem with Breathed is that I never really thought his stuff was funny.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I noticed that one too. Those kids are going to have some weird ideas growing up. "Mom, can we go and vacuum grandpa's grave?" I can just imagine them taking toy vacuum cleaners in and making an old lady have a heart attack because of the sheer cheek of it all..
two months (Score:3, Insightful)
Loved Bloom County but it was stuck in time. I think I paid attention to Berkeley Breathed for about two months after he ended Bloom County. I read a couple Outland strips. Even Berkeley must have realized they sucked, because he had to save it by reintroducing Opus and friends, which he had announced he didn't want to do. But it still sucked. Other than reading someone's Bloom County anthology, and smiling with the fond memory, I haven't looked at them since.
Re:two months (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, big-time. It was like the 1980's and early '90s never ended in there... I loved it when it was out, but nowadays, it seems pretty irrelevant.
In spite of its subtle politics, it was damned funny. The politicking he employed was more of a scalpel (far better than the blatant dull machete' that was Doonesbury) which is what made you read Bloom County no matter what your politics were - and even if you were a staunch neocon, you laughed your ass off at it.
Then again, it lacks that timelessness which Calvin and Hobbes has. I have a shedload of Calvin and Hobbes books on the shelves... OTOH, I can't remember owning any Bloom County books since 1993 (I'd lost the ones I had when the apartment got flooded... never really bothered to replace them - I really should head out and get a few just to take me back).
C&H is a never-ending fountain of laughs (in spite of the moronic and seemingly never-ending 'calvin pissing on $object' car sticker derivatives). Bloom County OTOH is (sadly) a time capsule.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Good run, good time to stop (Score:3, Interesting)
Argh - I just threw away all my Bloom County books last month when I moved! The comic was great - I'm 30 so I missed some of the political references when I was younger but I read all the books later and loved those comics. I didn't pick up Opus again even after he was back the last couple of years because it didn't feel the same. I'll be sure to buy the compilation of all the latest ones and enjoy them. Opus certainly had a great run and it's probably time to put him away before he gets too old.
Favorite Bloom County punchline ... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Pear pimples for hairy fish nuts?"
Aside from any reasons that may be brought up to be annoyed with Breathed, his comics or his politics, Opus and Bloom County made me laugh HYSTERICALLY at things I did not even understand or knew I should be aware of. That is what I think makes a good comic or cartoon. A mix of simple funny and satire can bring smiles to both those in the know and those who just like to watch.
Coreigh
Re: (Score:2)
Opus: And if elected I pledge to push for the legalization of the home use of 50mm anti-tank bazookas!
Old lady from the Society of Pro-acrylic knitters: Good heavens? Whatever for?
BC still available... (Score:3, Informative)
...at http://news.yahoo.com/comics/bloomcounty [yahoo.com].
I've been reading the old stuff day-by-day. Some of it is remarkably relevant to current events.
Of course, today's strip is conveniently missing - go figure. Anyway, I thought I'd share the link to a comic that's on my short list.
J
Like Groening, let it go on WAY past its prime (Score:5, Insightful)
Bloom County was probably the best comic strip of the 80's. And, when Breathed started to lose steam, he ended it.
But he didn't, really. He just cut it back to Sundays under a new name. And so that pattern has continued until the series had long since become stale and forgettable. The once-great Bloom County was reduced to a great big pile of who-gives-a-shit.
Sometimes, if you love something, you have to let it go. Better that it dies a dignified death than to drag it on into mediocrity. Matt Groening and Berkley Breathed are, sadly, prime examples of guys who had something truly magical, which they then beat into the ground for decades past when they should have called it quits.
Re:Like Groening, let it go on WAY past its prime (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Bloom County doesn't hold up well (Score:5, Insightful)
I went back and read some Bloom County books recently. They are as dated as Doonesbury from the early 70s. Not that the weren't great, but they were a product of their time.
Read your Calvin and Hobbes books instead. Those are timeless. My kids love them.
Get the complete set. (Score:2)
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Calvin-Hobbes/dp/0740748475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223560779&sr=1-1 [amazon.com]
I recently purchased this and have been amazed at the strips I missed. The collection books really do leave a lot out and C&H are timeless. Frankly, I enjoy C&H much more and it both children and adults can enjoy it at the same and for different reasons
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't say that being stuck in time doesn't mean they don't hold up well. Bloom County, like Doonesbury and Pogo before that, were satire and sociopolitical commentary. They don't have much choice but to become dated when politicians retire, events are forgotten, and society moves on. It's a different style, that's all. Social cartoons become dated. Their counterpart (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts) don't.
deja vu. all over again. (Score:2, Interesting)
Good Riddance (Score:2, Troll)
That comic was totally lame. It was like the Emperor's New Clothes, a guy who can't draw and who isn't funny, but it's put together in a way that sends the message "hey this is so countercultural, you'll be cool if you pretend it's funny." It's like one big in-joke, except nobody's in on the joke except the cartoonist. I'm sick of this "ironic appreciation" hipster crap, can't we have something that is actually funny, rather than "so unfunny it's funny"...?
There are plenty of excellent cartoonists who deser
What kind of ending... (Score:3, Interesting)
2. A Matrix ending, where Opus gets to spend all his time in his own matrix illusion with the dandelions.
3. A Soprano momemt, where all the old characters meet in a restaurant, Bill the Cat can't park the car, and the last frame goes black?
4. Seinfeld, where they all end up in prison.
Re: (Score:2)
How about Opus taken to the backroom of the local animal shelter?
I have fond memories of Opus... (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember Bloom County (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember Bloom County (and the Far Side, for that matter) - it was a wonderful, funny, insightful, different comic strip.
Unfortunately Opus (the comic) never really fired on all cylinders. Breathed tried to do something a bit different, but it just didn't quite work. Then, when he came to realize that, he started trying to drag back a few of the Bloom County regulars; but without young Milo it just couldn't work.
I think Breathed would've been better served - as would we fans - if he'd just resurrected Bloom County the same way Trudeau did with Doonesbury. It's a comic - so there's no rule you have to age your characters in real time. (Although some of us would prefer Bil Keane did exactly that, since it'd mean little Billy would've retired years ago).
We did have it good in the 80's. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bloom County. The Far Side. Calvin & Hobbes.
And Zippy the Pinhead for those into, ah, more chemically-induced forms of humor.
But now we have web comics. And the golden age of comic strips is with us once again.
The comic strip is dead. Long live the comic strip.