Berkeley Breathed, the supremely talented cartoonist behind Opus and the recently-collected Bloom County comic strips, talked to CNN this week about the genesis of his new children’s book Flawed Dogs, which he actually pegs more as a prepubescent reader than really “children’s.”
Breathed told the news organization that the book was inspired, in part, by the dog abuse by Michael Vick and how some of those dogs were able to be saved by a nonprofit; he also dishes on why angry comics are not, typically speaking, good comics as far as political cartoonists are concerned and how that relates to the end of Opus.
My favorite part of the interview, though? As part of running down his own skills, Breathed pointed out that “If ‘Peanuts’ had been drawn with the artistry of ‘Pogo’ and a Disney animator, it wouldn’t have worked.”
Check it out here.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Isn’t Flawed Dogs an older book of Breathed’s, or am I thinking of something else? I’ll look it up.
Anyhow, I love that guy… An underappreciate genius, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sorry Opus ended, but I know he’d been frustrated with things. I was frustrated that my local newspaper never carried the damned strip. If there isn’t a complete collection of Opus out yet, I’m sure there will be and I will have it. I’ll look that up too.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
OK… The new Flawed Dogs is a novel! I wasn’t expecting that… Here’s the old one I was thinking of:
http://www.amazon.com/Flawed-Dogs-Leftovers-Piddleton-Chance/dp/0316713597/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255484716&sr=1-12
Anyhow, children’s book or not, I will be buying the new one. I can share it with my daughter, who still has her stuffed Opus.