There’s been a lot of speculation and pondering, but now it’s official. The Washington Post Writers Group has announced that Berkeley Breathed’s Sunday-only comic strip Opus will draw to a close on Nov. 2.
Readers with good long-term memories will recall that Breathed’s return to the comics pages after wrapping up Outland way back in 1995 was hailed as one of the last-chance hopes for a flailing newspaper industry. Though it performed reasonably well (Tom Spurgeon says it stayed in the 200-client range), it never duplicated the success of Breathed’s original strip, Bloom County.
Breathed is ending the strip by asking readers to determine the final fate of its titular character. The Daily Cartoonist has information on the contest as well as a pulled quote from the artist himself:
30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.
The contest officially begins on Oct. 12.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
not a surprise. with these past few weeks of flashbacks and meeting the “creator”, you could see where Breathed was going.
too bad the series stories weren’t as funny as Bloom County and the large art is still squeezed to fit it in. also, I think the weekly helps in developing stories and pacing. even Prince Valiant gets hard to follow from week-to-week.
I wonder what my local paper, Houston Chronicle, is going to use to replace it?
October 7th, 2008 at 9:38 am
If they have taste, Cul de Sac.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:06 am
My stupid town’s stupid newspaper (the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) never carried Opus. I couldn’t get it online either, so except for a collection of Opus strips that came out a few years I had to go without. All the crappy strips my local paper carries, but no Opus. Probably one of the best, smartest things out there.
Hopefully, Breathed will have the entire run collected at some point. Hell, I’d even buy it in hardcover.
I’m gonna miss that little guy… Even more than I do now.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Opus has been running every week on Salon.com for some time now.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Sadly, Opus was never funny. Breathed is at least self-aware enough to see that it’s not what he wanted it to be, and smart enough to quit before he loses his reputation entirely. Then again, he was smart enough to end Bloom County in the first place. He and Bill Watterson and Lynn Johnston get nothing but praise from me for their willingness to say “I’ve reached the end.” If only Scott Adams would do that.
(An exception can be made for Garry Trudeau since he still manages to be as funny as often as he did thirty years ago.)
October 7th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
@ Richard: Aww, crap! I never knew that… The word I’d always heard was that Breathed wasn’t making it available online, in an attempt to get more papers to pick it up. Alas, my town’s stupid, parochial newspaper never did. Well, I’ll still wait for that inevitable collection.
@ Simon: Not funny? I can’t speak for the strip, aside from the handful I saw while in other cities (and in that compilation book for a few years back that covered Bloom County up to Opus), but it always felt like a breath of fresh air whenever I was lucky enough to read one. Certainly better than just about anything else out there.
I agree that Trudeau still does great work on a fairly regular basis. He’s certainly had enough material to work with this decade!
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Looking for final panel of Opus. Can’t locate it at Humane Society.org/opus. Am I looking in wrong place? Thanks for your help.