OPUS RETURNS

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OPUS RETURNS

James Joyner | Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Berkeley Breathed is returning to the cartooning business after an eight-year hiatus with a new strip based on Opus the Penguin, of “Bloom County” (1980-89) and “Outland” (1989-1995) fame. Like “Outland,” this will be a Sunday-only strip debuting November 23rd. It will “fill half a page in the comics section,” though.

“Outland” was never that good but “Bloom County” was a classic.

“It’s one of those strips that, when it left the comic pages, the comic pages were quite a bit lesser for its absence,” says Harry Knowles, editor in chief of the Web’s Ain’t It Cool News and an avid fan of newspaper comics. “I think there’s been three great strips that have gone away over the last five, 10 years that I really miss: ‘Bloom County,’ ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ and ‘The Far Side.’ Those are the three strips that never should have ceased.”

Indeed. I’ve got the entire runs of all those strips in paperback volumes. “Bloom County” is rather dated, since a lot of the humor was based on the politics of the day rather than the timeless observations of family life and humanity that characterized “C&H” and “Far Side.”

(Hat tip: Steven Taylor)

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

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