Ok, so I (like many others) was kinda excited about the return of Opus recently to the comics page, in Berkeley Breathed’s new strip Opus.
After the first few strips, I (like many others) was feeling kinda “meh.”
On the up side, the character Opus was returning (geographically, at least) to Bloom County.
But this new strip hasn’t really seemed like a return (spiritually?) to its roots in the original Bloom County strip.
Which brings me to today’s strip.
[spoiler]Opus is about to enter Bloom County. He sees ahead of him some ghost-like images of his ‘old-school’ friends (Oliver, Milo, Steve, Binkley, and Bill). Binkley and Bill have captions explaining their present circumstances. The others have “?” by them. Opus launches into a rant about there being “no permanency” in the world. By the end of the strip, he is regaining hope about returning to his old home and says “It’s morning… Ya know what they call morning… Life’s little reboot button.” And he goes running off toward Bloom County.
And something I noticed which I don’t know if it means anything or not: there was no title panel or even a title at all for today’s strip. Nothing at all that claimed this strip to be “Opus.” Last week’s Sunday strip had a small “Opus” title illustration (but not a full panel illustration) I may be reading too much into this, but it makes me wonder.[/spoiler]
Now, I hate to get excited about this strip after being let down so many times in the past, but does this mean a return of at least some of the ‘old gang’ and maybe more of a Bloom County feel than an Outland vibe? Anybody else read today’s strip and think the same thing?
Actually, I found several to be quite amusing. Maybe it just takes less to entertain me. I won’t necessarily say they are anywhere near close to being as good as Bloom County, but I laughed once or twice nonetheless.
These seem not to be random at all, despite the page’s title, but rather weekly Sunday strips (in order). Are there also weekday strips that run six days a week in addition to these Sunday strips?
Hey, I like what I’ve seen of “Opus” so far.* The art style takes a little getting used to, but it’s pretty solid.
And a HELL of a lot better than “Outland”…or the later Bloom County strips, when Berke started getting weird. (Weirder than normal. Outside acceptible weirdness parameters.)
*Bought legally from a newspaper stand from a licenced merchant. Yeah…that’s the ticket.
Not true. It was printed on the side of his suitcase. Similarly, in the one where he visits Binkley’s mom, it was on the cover of the tabloid she was reading. He seems to be squeezing the title into context in a lot of them; it’s only when he can’t fit it in somewhere that he goes with an explicit title block.
