This news makes me sad. I stopped reading the newspaper comic strips a few years ago because they've just gotten plain bad. Almost all of the good strips have gone away, and the few that remain I follow online. One of the last remaining comic strips I like is Opus. Written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed, Opus is a Sunday-only comic starring his character Opus the Penguin. Well, on November 2nd, Opus is coming to an end.
In an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times, the 51-year-old Breathed wrote, “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.”
Admittedly, Breathed's work hasn't been as great as it was back in the Bloom County days, but I was still happy to have Opus appearing in the comics pages in some form. He was a last hold over from the days when I read the comics daily for both Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes and others. Now, Opus too will be gone, and I have even less reason to read the comics page.
Breathed has always been a political cartoonist. His entire body of work has made some form of commentary on the US political scene, and I guess the current state of affairs is too much for him.
“With the crisis in Wall Street and Washington, I’m suspending my comic strip to assist the nation. The best way I can help is to leave politics permanently and write funny stories for America’s kids. I call on John McCain to join me.”
I guess I'm resigned to only reading webcomics from now on. Aside from Doonesbury, there isn't really much left to read there anymore. I don't know what happened to the comic page, but all of the new strips absolutely suck.
I miss the good old days. God I feel so old.
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