I have every Bloom Country book of collected comics. I have a stuff Opus on my desk. The “Banana Jr” used to grace my cube wall.
Try as I may, though, I just can’t find enjoy the new strip. Sure, Bloom County was cynical at times but there was always this up-beat tenor to it. Opus was a bit like Charlie Brown, downtrodden but always looking forward.
Now it just seems cynical. No shine left.
Am I alone in this? What’s your opinion of the new “Opus” strip.
I loved Bloom County, but Breathed is just phoning this in. There’s no character development, no story arc. I remember the disappointment I felt when I realized "this isn’t worth reading’, because I was a huge Bloom County fan.
My local paper doesn’t carry any good cartoons. Either it’s warmed-over stuff like this, or incomprehensible gibberish like Zippy Pinhead, where it not only isn’t funny, I don’t even understand what about it is supposed to be funny.
When Salon started carrying Opus, I was thrilled. Every week, I read it, and each time started to send a link to Mr. Athena. And each week, I stopped myself - it just wasn’t good enough to forward to anyone.
After about 6 weeks of that, I despaired. Where were all the good Opus strips?
After 6 months of it, I realized there just weren’t any. I wish Breathed would just stop. It’s depressing, after how good Bloom County was.
Well, Bloom County itself went downhill rapidly, from an absolutely brilliant first year to just plain awful. It certainly had jumped the shark when they turned Steve into a liberal, and I’d say the process began when Bill the Cat became a regular character. When you’re reduced to writing in your strips, “Believe me, this is really funny” (as did happen toward the end), there’s nothing left.
The strips after Bloom County, showed no evidence of any renaissance.
I agree that it’s not worthy of its legacy, but I still like it better than most other crap out there now. How I long for the salad days of Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side and Bloom County.
I think part of the problem is that Berke’s daily strips were always better than the Sunday strips. Since he’s only doing Sunday strips, that doesn’t help.
In between Bloom County, wasn’t there some travesty called Outland? If I recall, that kinda sucked too. Anyway, I agree that Opus is but a pale shadow of the joy that used to be Bloom County. For shame, Berkeley, for shame…
Here I must disagree a bit. I loved Bill the Cat - he is actually the only thing I can draw from memory. He has the same first name as me, maybe that’s part of it. But c’mon - Deathtongue? Good stuff, man…
Breathed pretty much lost it the moment he stopped making Bloom County. The shift from BC to Outland was amazingly strong and fully downhill. I don’t know how he accomplished that.
Cynical? I read it as more crass and preachy, myself—whereas the older strips were at least creative and quirky. But overall, like he’s just going through the motions. That might be read as cynical (“Yeah, yeah, Bush is the devil, peace love dope, now give me my check.”), or just an artist past their prime trying to shoehorn themselves into the modern scene. (Like Michael Jackson, or, I dunno…Bloody Mary.*)
*Sorry—all I could think of, aside from that Billy Jack guy.
The early Outlands didn’t even have the same characters - maybe Opus but that’s all. They slowly wandered in since the new characters didn’t catch on at all.
“Mortimer Mouse” was the only one I remember. Mickey’s cousin or brother or something.
I futzed back and forth in my OP about “cynical”. I’m at a loss for a good adjective other than “sucky” but I didn’t want to offer that up since it seemed - well - a little unspecific.
Yeah, it only lasted a few months before he brought back all the old characters. But I meant that there was a drastic change in quality. Bloom County was decently strong all the way through to the end, but OUtlands fairly well started out crappy and never got much better, even when it trashed all the new characters.
Bill was mildly funny at the start, but the joke wore very thin very quickly.
I won’t say it immediately sucked when Bill was introduced, but it was a step downward. The strip’s quality just got worse and worse as it wore on. Take a look at the first collection – just plain brilliant strips, so much so that I had a feeling that Bloom County could have been one of the greats. But it just kept getting less and less interesting. After a few years, it was a mid-level strip on a par with, say, The Middletons (though much stranger).
And you could see it. In the early strip, Breathed hit the bulls eye nearly all the time. As it continued, he would miss. The idea was funny, but the execution was just slightly off target, so it wasn’t as funny as it should have been. Finally, the ideas stopped being funny.
I don’t care what you say, I love Bill the Cat. So there.
But seriously, I can’t necessarily disagree about the gradual downfall of Bloom County, even before its unfortunate offspring. However, it does bring up an interesting question (for me, at least). I can’t help but wonder if even the best comic strip writers are ultimately, over the course of time, doomed. Just as already stated, one can hit a bullseye consistently for a while, but given time, it only makes sense that there would be progressively more misses.
I guess my question is, how does a comic strip writer know when it’s time to give up their bread and butter? (Please bear in mind, this is not a defense of Mr. Breathed’s recent work in any way, shape, or form)
Not sure, but I think more of them need to talk to Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes fame. He stopped while the strip was still strong and beloved by many.