In an interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, Berkeley Breathed talked about ending his current Sunday-only strip:

Breathed says that he’s not usually sentimental about his characters. Still, he found himself “unrealistically emotional” about drawing the final strip, taking pains to make sure the penguin’s last pose was perfect.

Creating Opus for the last time, says Breathed, was like experiencing the passing of his kids’ childhood: “As I drew him finally at the very end, I knew that that was the end — [Opus'] childhood was gone. … It took me a few minutes. I had to pull myself back together again and face the fire.”

Breathed also talks about his upcoming children’s book, Pete & Pickles, which is about a lonely pig who befriends a circus elephant.

Goof Button presents some great Whitney Darrow Jr. cartoons from the book Sex and the Single Child by one Sam Levenson.

As Americans brace themselves for tonight’s presidential debate, it’s fitting that tomorrow marks the release of IDW Publishing’s heavily promoted biographies of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama.

In a similar vein, Wednesday also will see After 9/11: America’s War on Terror, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon’s follow-up to their celebrated adaptation of the 9/11 Report.

But if politics and war — and the politics of war — aren’t your bag, you’ll also find the first issue of the new Marvel Zombies miniseries, the third installment of Grady Klein’s The Lost Colony series, oversized editions of Hellboy and I Luv Halloween, and an Owly collection. Those are just for starters, though.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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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.

• Invincible Iron Man writer Matt Fraction contrasts the love lives of Tony Stark and … Captain America? “… I would love to write a story about Tony Stark’s complicated love life. It’s an aspect of his character, that’s for sure. [It's like] in the movie, when he goes to bed with the angry reporter from Berkeley; you can imagine that same reporter with a similar line of questioning with Captain America, but you can’t imagine Captain America seducing her later. But with Tony, you can, so we should absolutely take advantage of it.” [The Washington Post]

• Cartoonist Bill Griffith discusses Zippy the Pinhead as a cottage industry, and the financial impact of his website: “Over the years, income from the Zippy website has gone from about a third of my annual income to about a half — in other words, the website has doubled my income. Most of my Web income is from sales of Zippy originals — the original artwork of the daily strips — as well as signed prints of strips and original art from my underground days.” [The Hartford Courant]

• Ignatz nominee MK Reed talks about the collaboration process: “It’s been very different from working on my own, and there was definitely a learning curve figuring out how Jonathan [Hill] was most likely to work out different parts. I’ve been working with him for over a year now, so we’ve kind of gotten things together by this point, and there’s a lot less arguing about how certain things should look or what needs to be corrected. Jonathan is insanely talented and I know he car handle pretty much anything I throw at him. Because he’s a more talented artist than I am, I can actually make up completely crazy detailed things like crowd scenes in a supermarket, and know they’ll look awesome.” [New York Daily News]

• Alex Irvine, author of The Vertigo Encyclopedia, considers the influence of the DC Comics imprint: “… I think it’s probably safe to say that the success of Vertigo had a lot to do with DC and Marvel being willing to take their regular universe books in more mature directions. Also, the Sandman phenomenon brought so much attention to comics in general that it created a huge new appetite for comics with a certain kind of attitude. This in turn meant that people who had worked primarily in indie and underground comics — David Lapham comes to mind, or Paul Pope — had a chance to put their work in front of new audiences.” [Omnivoracious]

– The new blog Comix Claptrap has a podcast interview with cartoonist Vanessa Davis.

– The blog Disorder & Its Opposite suggests 10 Ideal Books to Introduce Readers to Comics.

– Ger Apeldoorn shares some more Harvey Kurtzman strips.

– Chris Sims looks at Tom Spurgeon’s top 50 list and comes up with his own:

22. A Comic Where Somebody Punches Hitler

Because seriously, fuck that guy.

– Feel like a free Warren Craghead mini comic? Here you go.

– Seriously, what’s up with Hi & Lois anyway?

As we skid into October, I find myself having a bit of an off week, at least comics-wise. I just don’t see much that catches my eye.

Chris Mautner, on the other hand, has spied a veritable treasure trove, from a Baby Huey collection to Batman #680 a Complete Peanuts box set.

So, maybe it’s just me.

Wednesday also sees the Dark Tower: The Long Road Home hardcover, the debut of Steve Niles’ future-noir City of Dust, and a one-shot dedicated Bruce Campbell’s My Name Is Bruce movie.

To see what other titles Chris and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Hairy Green Eyeball posts a bunch of “bosses chasing secretaries” gag cartoons from a 1948 issue of Cartoon Humor. He’s also got another round-up of great Jack Davis album covers, if you prefer more of that instead.

Ger Apeldoorn shares a funny animal story by Walt Kelly, as well as some other delights.

I’m Learning to Share has an interesting assortment of gag cartoons by one Bill O’Malley done for Extension Magazine.

Lionsgate has released the final trailer for The Spirit, and it’s … probably the best piece of promotion to date for the Frank Miller movie. (Better late than never, right?) For once, his city doesn’t scream “Sin City!” or “This is Sparta!”

The Spirit opens on Dec. 25.

The Walrus offers an amusing commentary on a recent Chester Brown strip designed for Toronto’s “Live With Culture” campaign (you can download a pdf of the strip in question here).

It’s a good week for fans of classic comics as publishers roll out collections ranging from Nemesis Archives, Vol. 1, and Showcase Presents: Metal Men, Vol. 2, to Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Barks/Rosa Collection, Vol. 3, and The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Vol. 4.

Looking for something a little more recent? Then try the Absolute edition of Frank Miller’s Ronin, the premiere hardcover of Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones’ Marvel Boy miniseries, or the special edition of Dan Clowes’ Ghost World.

But if single issues are more your thing, there’s a new Solomon Kane series, the end of The Ultimates 3, the introduction of Lady Bullseye in Daredevil, and the finale of the Atlas story arc in Superman.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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I had never heard of this 1950s-era comic strip before discovering it here, but I’m sure glad I know about it now.

I’m Learning to Share, um, shares some classic covers from long-ago Pogo collections. I think my mom’s cousin has a lot of these books still, stored safely away behind glass bookshelves.

– Ever wonder what the Fantagraphics offices look like? Apparently they look like this.

– Ever wonder what Josh Cotter’s sketchbook looks like? Apparently it looks like this.

– I’m not sure what Scott McCloud has to do with scurrilous manga pouring into Vietnam’s borders, but whatever.

– The Web site for the upcoming Dear Mr. Watterson documentary has a trailer up.

– Zak Sally shares some rejected Nickelodeon gags. I like the second one best.

– Baltimore’s City Paper is having a comics contest.

In one of the most revealing interviews I’ve read since she decided to enter into semi-retirement last year, For Better or For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston talks to the Peterborough Examiner about the dissolution of her marriage and how that influenced her plans for the strip:

If Lynn can’t remember the details of the day she’ll never forget, she knows this much is true: around eight o’clock in the evening her husband of 30 years walked into the kitchen and broke her heart.

I’m leaving you, he told her.

I’ve been seeing another woman for some time. You know her.

It may not have come out in precisely those words or in that exact order, but the message was clear. He was going and that was that; he would make no amends for his betrayal.

At first Lynn was in shock, but then the pain set in — along with its more outgoing sidekick, anger.

After he left, she drove into town, bought some vodka, drank too much vodka and unleashed her fury on her husband’s jeep. Ironically, the Carrie Underwood song, Before He Cheats, was topping the charts at the time. It tells the tale of a jilted woman who takes a baseball bat to the headlights of her unfaithful lover’s car; Lynn’s weapon of choice was a rake.

Among the other revelations: Johnston is headed to Peru for awhile to work with a medical team as an intepreter.

UGO.com has two new posters for Frank Miller’s adaptation of The Spirit. Surprisingly enough, neither features a close-up of one the movie’s femmes fatales.

See the second poster after the break.

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The Australian marks a world-record milestone for Frew’s The Phantom comic series: 60 years, and more than 1,500 issues, of uninterrupted publication.

The newspaper notes that each issue, “published every fortnight or so,” still sells about 30,000 copies — nearly a decade after the death of creator Lee Falk.

As the Internet lately has been curiously free of comments like, “It looks like Sin City 2!” and “What happened to the blue suit?” Slashfilm delivers a new batch of images from Frank Miller’s The Spirit.

Those first few photos make me think we’re in for a round of, “It looks like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow … 2!”

The Spirit is set to open on Christmas.