Berke BReathed was absoluitely right to retire when he did, just as Bill Watterston and Gary Larson did. I applaud cartoonists who call it quits when they recognize that their work has become stale uninspired. I only wish Garry Trudeau, Charles Schulz, Bil Keane and Johnny Hart had done the same, a long time ago.
Sure, I missed “Bloom County,” but “Outland” was such drivel, I understood why Breathed retired in the first place. Plainly, he had nothing interesting or funny left to say, and he was kind enough to stop bothering us with his increasingly feeble rants.
Until now.
I used to love Opus. I really did. But now? God, he’s annoying. So is the entire strip. If Breathed is simply broke, I suppose I can’t begrudge him a chance to make a few bucks. But his work is now wretched. Utterly unreadable, and no fun at all.
So, Berke? If you DON’T need the money, re-heed your first instincts, and retire again! And try to talk Garry Trudeau into going with you.
I still have an Opus doll. I’m a 32 year old male, by the way. I’ve got most of the original Bloom County compilation books. I even read them once in a while.
Outland sucked. Sorry Berke. Not good.
This new thing yer doin? Well… let’s just say I want Outland back.
It’s Not Funny.
Although I do kinda like the ‘time traveler from 10 years ago’ aspect, lookin’ at today’s world, it’s just not the same.
Amen! Berke, either give us Bloom County the way it was or quit. Spend less time on the visuals and more time on humor. Look at cartoons- which was funnier, the old fashioned 2D Bugs Bunny or the new 3D version?
Actually, Breathed should have quit “Bloom County” several years before he did. The early strips were pure brilliance, but it became worse and worse as time went on. By the time he retired, they showed none of the talent he has shown the first year. (Turning Steve into a liberal yuppie was the worst of a bunch of terrible decisions, leading to the strip where Breathed had to comment, in effect, “This is funny folks. Really. It may not seem so, but it is.”)
I had such high hopes for Opus, too, as I’m sure most people did. I believe it was mentioned in an earlier thread that what made Bloom County so good was that it was an ensemble 'toon; perhaps - just perhaps - if Breathed brought back the old gang, it might work. Outland got a little better when old characters were brought in; it wasn’t too good when it centered around Opus, Ronald-Ann, Milquetoast, et al.
He had a huge and loyal fanbase, and that strip was his life. Millions of people all around the world were saddened when he died.
Shouldn’t a person be able to ply their craft as long as they can and there’s a viable market for it? Granted, you (and I) may have become tired of it, but millions of others still loved it and continue to love it to this day. I know you said everyone has a right to earn a living, but would you truly be in favor of depriving the fans of Peanuts the enjoyment they derive from it simply because it no longer appeals to you creatively?
Just because millions of people mourned when he died doesn’t mean the most recent strips (say the last twenty years or so) were any good. People mourned because Schulz was a culture icon, not because they were bummed that the strip would end.
Not any good to whom? According to the Washington Post, at the time of his death he was syndicated to more than 2,600 newspapers around the world, appeared in about 25 languages and reached an estimated audience of 355 million. And if I remember correctly, Forbes magazine shortly before his death estimated his income from the comic strip only to be more than $30 million dollars a year. Clearly, *someone * liked it.
I’m not trying to start an argument here, I just think it’s a good idea to remember when discussing the merits of someone’s work, that the opinion given is just that: an opinion. Just because one person feels the work of a particular artist is either no longer good–or never was–it doesn’t mean this is an absolute fact, nor does it mean the artist in question would necessarily be well advised to give up his art.
Personally, I’ve never been that great of a fan of a couple of strips mentioned here, but I would be the last person to say that because I don’t think these strips have merit their authors should retire.
Opus does suck, and what sucks even more–it takes up such a large amount of space that other cartoons I enjoy are now squeezed into about half their former space.
Not good for a lot of people. The fact that he was syndicated in 2600 papers doesn’t mean too much, because he had been drawing the strip for 50 years. Papers don’t often drop strips that have been around a while; it’s likely the vast bulk of those 2600 papers had carried the strip for more than two decades. So you can’t point to the number of papers as any indication of quality.
It’s also possible that when papers did want to drop the strip, they were loudly voted down by loyal followers of the strip. It doesn’t take much to keep a paper from dropping a longtime strip - only a few complainers would suffice.
My opinion is that the strip in its later years was painful to read, and my opinion further is that rerunning all of the strips now (as some sort of misguided “tribute” to the artist) takes away from strips that are fresh and new.
Fair enough, that’s your opinion. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
But what of the artist’s love of what he’s doing, and the fanbase, regardless of size, that loves it, too? Who is to be the arbiter of when something’s no longer “good?” You are a critic now, but what of the critics of the strip when it was new? Assuming you liked Peanuts at one point, would it have been valid for them to delare the strip no good and, assuming they had the power to do so, deprive you of your enjoyment of it? And to deny Schulz the enjoyment and fulfillment he got from doing it?
Again, I’m not saying you don’t have a right to your own opinion. I’m just saying the OP, to be fair, should not have stated that Schulz’s work was no longer “good” as a fact, when it is really just his opinion.
The OP opined that it was his wish that those artists had stopped long ago, instead of producing junk (sorry, astorian, if I’m putting words in your mouth). This is a statement of an opinion, nothing more.
Not to split hairs or anything, but I believe the overall tone and thrust of his message was that once a cartoon no longer pleases him creatively, the artist should retire. I’m simply saying this is a rather grandiose and self-centered (sorry, OP, this is not to critisize you personally; I mean this philosophically) point of view. A form of snobbery, in a sense.
And once again, what of the enjoyment of the fans and the fulfillment of the artist, and the fact that to these people the strip is just as valid as if it were more pleasing to you creatively? (I’m wondering why there has been no response to this aspect of the discussion. I admit I’m new to this site. Is it because the question is outside the OP, or is it just that no one wants to address it?)
I think you’re making a bit too much of it, Starving Artist. There’s nothing wrong with wishing artists would quit while they’re ahead rather than slowly devolving into pandering fools.
Ok, that’s a bit overreaching. But one reason that people feel so strongly about Watterson, Larson, et al. is that they remember the artists as being at the top of their game. They remember them as producing funny, original, clever work, rather than becoming another (forgive me) Hi and Lois or Beetle Bailey. Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County were a cut above merely entertaining, so through the natural course of events they had nowhere to go but down, eventually. Strips like Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, on the other hand, have been at pretty much the same level for decades.
For what it’s worth, even though Schulz’s stuff was pretty lame in the 80’s and 90’s, I loved that Rerun Van Pelt-centric last year. Schulz was getting a kind of a second wind.
The best explanation of Schultz and Peanuts in the later years was a comment in a book of interviews by Neil Gaiman. He asked someone about it, and the point wasn’t that Schultz had lost anything, but that everyone else had caught up to him.