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Sunday, Jul 5, 2009
Berkeley Breathed explains how our coarse national dialogue led him to end his strip. But what fate awaits our beloved, big-nosed hero?
By Kerry Lauerman
Read more: Books, Kerry Lauerman, Books Features, Berkeley Breathed, Opus by Berkeley Breathed
Berkeley Breathed
Opus
Oct. 18, 2008 | As the country excitedly awaits our great quadrennial political climax, a smaller subset looks toward the first week of November with great anxiety and dread. On Sunday, Nov. 2, the comic "Opus" will end. Worse yet, creator Berkeley Breathed has made it clear that the strip's namesake will, in that final strip, find his "final paradise."
Sure, it's been an unnaturally long run for a penguin. Opus, who started with a bit part in Breathed's Pulitzer-winning "Bloom County" (1980-89), starred in "Outland" (1989-95) and finally took center stage in "Opus" (2003-08). But for those of us accustomed to seeing our own thoughts -- and fears, hopes and simmering anger -- take flight in the broken-nosed face of a penguin every week, there's no preparation for his exit, only mourning.
Breathed says it's the anger that led him to close the book on "Opus," that the increasingly nasty political climate has made it too difficult to keep his strip from drifting into darkness. Breathed has described his work as a hybrid of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz's gentle humor and Michael Moore's crusading social justice. Perhaps losing touch with his inner Charlie Brown, Breathed has said that "a mad penguin, like a mad cartoonist, isn't very lovable," and wants Opus to take his final bow before bitterness changes him forever.
As for Breathed, he says he will turn to other projects, such as his children's books. His latest, "Pete & Pickles," is just out, a delightful love story of sorts between a practical pig and a whimsical circus elephant.
He answered a round of our questions this week, through e-mail, about Opus' end, rumors about Breathed's own health, and just what, precisely, will happen to our beloved penguin in two weeks.
You've said that you're ending "Opus" because you believe "We are about to enter a rather wicked period in our National Discourse," and that it will make keeping the successful tone of the strip impossible. Why do you think that things will get worse -- especially after the acrimony of the past eight years?
We're not a movie. In most aspects, there's no arc to the human story. Only a line heading upward. For nearly everything. In this case, the coarsening of the National Discourse. We aren't returning someday to any sort of golden era of political civility. The line heads heavenward and has been since the Republic started. And with the intersection of two rather dramatic dynamics -- the cable and Web technology allowing All Snark All the Time ... and the political realities of No More Free Lunch in America, it will spike in the coming years like Don Draper's sex life, and I hereby pledge that that's the last pop reference I use.
Aren't dark times exactly when satire is most needed?
It's not so much dark times now, as profane and loud. Satire you'll have, oh dear me, indeedy yes. "Vomitous" and "awash" are two words that come to mind. It used to be that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. How antediluvian. Rather, everyone will now want a satirical YouTube film with 15 megabytes.
Satire we'll have. Rather, the real dearth in our world will be sweetness, comfort, thoughtfulness and civility. If I could do "Peanuts," that's what I'd be doing. Alas, I've tried. And oh, you get way, way richer.
There have been moments in the past few years when "Opus" upset your syndicate. (Specifically, this cartoon in 2007; and this cartoon earlier this year, which the Washington Post Writer's Group refused to even distribute.) How often in your career had that happened before? And is it more of a reflection of your work changing, or the climate that you're now creating in?
"Bloom County" had five times the edge of the work I do now. In 1986 I had a cockroach scream, "Reagan sucks!" in print size that took up the entire cartoon box. Nobody blinked -- 1,000 newspapers, quiet as a mouse. Now I draw a woman wearing a Muslim scarf, and the frantic publisher of the Washington Post Co. is on the phone at 9 p.m. telling me -- I am not making this up -- to adjust my character's hair so she doesn't look too unkempt.
Fear doesn't so much rule the wood pulp news industry. More like pee-on-themselves existential terror.
I will miss the crinkly mass of pressed dead tree held aloft over my Caesar salad and iced tea at the corner cafe.
