Update re Berke Breathed's "Bloom County" and Opus returning

WOO HOO! Bloom County is returning! ---BumbleBeeBoogie

Opus Saves The World: The goofysweet penguin from "Bloom County" returns, and the Sunday paper might actually be funny again
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/09/17/notes091703.DTL&nl=fix

OK so maybe "Rhymes with Orange" is occasionally cute and "Get Fuzzy" has a nice dry sardonic bite and of course "Boondocks" is the wonderfully bitter non-PC lightning rod du jour and some people for some reason really, really love "Zippy the Pinhead," though I'm still not sure why.

And there is always the everpresent irreverent ageless convoluted political in-speak of "Doonsbury," still kicking after all these years unless Trudeau has one of his 1,476 characters mention the health benefits of masturbation and then whoops, uptight papers unite and the strip is yanked for a day (except, we should note, in our very own Chron, which proudly ran the strip atop the Sunday comics page).

http://cnn.com/2003/US/Midwest/09/03/doonesbury.complaints.ap

And to this very day my own mother still sends me clipped copies of "Zits" to remind me of my teenage whitebread middle-American rocker-dude slacker heyday. What can you do.

But let's be honest: All in all, the comics page lo this past decade is essentially a vast wasteland of unfunny if not downright awful comical pap, stuff so bad and so uncharming and so badly drawn it makes you want to buy the complete "Simpsons" and "South Park" on DVD and check
Mark Fiore online and forget newspaper cartoons entirely, if you haven't lready.

http://sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/

These are the things we do not understand. These are the things that annoy and confound. Such as, why in god's name anyone but anyone anywhere on the planet finds "Cathy" or "Garfield" or "Hagar the Horrible" or "Wizard of Id" or "Beetle Bailey" even remotely funny in the slightest.

They are interchangeable. They are written by committees and drawn by lackeys. The gags are vacuous and sitcom-ish. Often, the original creator is long dead. And goddammit if Cathy snorts down one more box of chocolates with her mother in some sort of manic feeding frenzy while puling about bathing suit season and men via bad punchlines and incessant shouts of "aack!", well, it's time for a tranquilizer dart and some hardcore behavioral meds, honey. What, too bitter?

But there are glimmers of hope. There are hints of salvation. Because Berkeley Breathed, genius creator of the much-loved and expertly drawn and slyly wry "Bloom County" strip from the '80s, is returning to the Sunday comics page.

It's true. He is resurrecting Opus the penguin from that famous strip and giving the goofy flightless bird his very own leading role, and in so doing is resurrecting hope and humor and a bit of actual comic artistry and while I have no idea if the strip will have any of "Bloom's" former genius, all signs point to yes.

http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/opus_returns.html

"Bloom County" was that most rare of comic art. Smart, politically charged, sardonic, tender, humane, not angry or savage or mean-spirited but still wonderfully opinionated and liberal and warped beyond normal bounds, still wonderfully accessible, that perfect balance of cynicism and joy and winking perspective, with a cast of characters as deranged and delightful and perfectly honed as a late-night HBO series.

http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/favorite_strips.html

When Breathed cancelled the strip due to burnout, the news not only hit die-hard fans like a brick, it hit near the same time as the end of the unparalleled "Calvin and Hobbes" and Gary Larson's beautifully twisted "The Far Side," and to date, the comics page has never recovered.

The Sunday comics has always been a sort of cultural litmus test, the one place everyone turned first thing for their humor fix and yet the most neglected and abused page by newspaper editors and designers, as over the years it's seen its panels unceremoniously shrunk and its colors diluted and overall dedicated page space reduced so degradingly that even Bill Watterson of "Calvin and Hobbes" fame finally gave up, after railing for years about the sad state of the comic arts in the forwards to his collections, and even in impassioned speeches like this one:

http://www.planetcartoonist.com/editorial/state_watterson.shtml

And as any newspaper editor will tell you, few proposed changes raise more ire or draw more reader angst than knocking around the comics page. Change the font on the editorial section? Swap the location of the business page? Change the entire paper from hard news to raw screaming tabloid nudity and big pictures of J.Lo's ass? Whatever.

Discontinue "Sally Forth?" Dump "Zits"? Cancel the never ever even once
slightly funny "Beetle Bailey?" I will kill my subscription and organize a protest march and egg your goddamn house for the next ten years, Mr. Heartless Newspaper Editor.

Such is the nature of the comics page. Such is the nature of our desperate cravings for relief, for tiny doses of perspective, for something with which we can, even slightly, even momentarily, mollify or deflect the savage brutality and heartless corporateering and bloody BushCo reamings seeping all over the rest of the paper.

The comics page is a place of reprieve, exhalation, absolution. It is a place of pause, release, maybe even the rare and precious open-mouthed, coffee‹thru-the-nose laughter. It is a tension diffuser and stress
reliever and a blessed distraction from the never-ending assault on the spirit wrought by the soul-curdling headlines on A1. You want to get a real sense of the state of the union? Sample the mindset of the general readership? Read the comics page. Just don't read the "Family Circus"
-- ever.

And when the comics page suffers, so suffers the readership. It is a never-ending baffler as to why major papers don't double their comics sections, offer unbounded and more pointed humor and insight and art and take more risks in this area. Have they not witnessed the insane popularity of anime and adult cartoons and comic book conventions? God
knows the talent is out there, and it ain't anything like the numbing gags of "Hagar the Horrible."

But Opus is the Man. Or rather, he is the Penguin. He shall be the start. He shall herald a new day for the comics page. Let us believe it, even for a moment. Let us hope his return heralds the next "Calvin," a new "Far Side," another "Bloom County," another wave of talented and wickedly funny artists to go along with a handful of brave editors who will run them, and who will, in turn, help reinvigorate the nation's shattered sense of humor, its clearly terrified and Ashcroft-stabbed sense of irony and lightness and simple cartoon joy.

After all, if a bumbling Zen-like talking penguin with a thing for canned herring and pinwheel hats and sly meditations on the state of the galaxy can't save the damn nation, well, who can?