Choose Wisely...

Ohhh, this is hard. Endings like this always are for me. I am grieving over the imminent passing of one of the greatest creations in American history, and I am inconsolable.

You see, 28 years ago I discovered an unbelievable, masterful work of writing, humor and art in the most unlikely of all places: the daily newspaper.

It seems a young upstart comic stripper had recently gotten syndicated and was gleefully skewering the status quo like no other strip before ever had. It was pure genius. And no one was safe from this young man named Berkeley Breathed. Not Congress, not the President, not Michael Jackson, not feminists, not Wall Street, not tycoons, not rock & rollers, not journalists, no one. Hell, not even Garfield avoided getting BBQ'ed.

The name of that strip was Bloom County and it did more to influence me than all the crap I learned in High School (n'est-ce pas, Mr. Simon?). In fact, nothing has ever quite grabbed me the way Steve Dallas, Bill the Cat, Opus, Milo, Binkley, Portnoy, Hodge Podge, Oliver, Cutter John and Rosebud did. Nothing.

Bloom County provided me with the revelation of my life’s dream career: to be a daily syndicated newspaper cartoonist. And not just for me, but for probably about 978 million others. It captured a generation of comic strip fans imagination like nothing else ever did.

I mean, it showed the way. I am not overstating Bloom County's impact. Seriously. It really was that good. Honest. How good was it? You know the old saw about flattery and imitation? Well, just look at all the imitators B. Co. spawned over the years...Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy, Prickly City, Liberty Meadows, The Boondocks, The Duplex, Pooch Cafe, Sherman's Lagoon...man, the list goes on and on.

But none of them would have probably ever gotten syndicated if Bloom County hadn't broken such new ground in the amazing way it did. Back then, half-awake morning coffee sippers, giggling children, 3rd Grade teachers and “Cat Fancy” subscribers read Garfield. Comic artists, humor writers and future strippers read Bloom County. It simply wasn't for kiddies.

Bloom County created, filled and then broke the mold for this now much copied style of comic strip. After all, how many 'animals-talk-to-people' political/pop culture strips were there in 1980? None. It was truly the first and best of its kind.

Now, you might try to count Pogo, Walt Kelly's beautiful strip that ran from 1948 to 1975, but I think it rings up only as a mild inspiration, not a template. It simply didn't have the speed or the ‘now-ness’ that Bloom County had. And Doonesbury? No way.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for Doonesbury, but only in the sense that it provided Breathed a basic set of instructions only from which to begin a strip, not continuously sustain it. And besides, Doonesbury was mean, dishonest and always sagged under the weight of its own pathetic self importance. Bloom County took a different tack: it was actually funny. I wonder if that ever occurred to Gary Trudeau...

Sadly though, true pioneers are often not rewarded in proportion to their gifts or importance. Bloom County was wildly popular, but it was never going to overtake the fuzzy, warm, editor friendly strips like Garfield, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes or the like. It wasn't designed to compete like that. Instead, it was a living, breathing thing that simply did what it wanted and challenged you to go along and keep up. It didn’t need you, but it would hang out with you in the University lounge. It was the guy that sits next to you in the movies popping off great one liners, mocking the stinko film you're watching together. It was MST3K to all of American culture in the 1980’s.

No, it was even more than that. Bloom County was The Rolling Stones to Garfield's Beatles. Just as the Beatles were a better pop band that had broader appeal to pre-teen girls, mommies and radio station owners, Garfield was the strip of the casual reader. But just as the Stones were the best rock band, Bloom County sat on the high throne for the comics purist.

And just as the Messrs. Jagger & Richards inspired far more rock & roll bands than the Beatles ever did, Bloom County awakend and inspired more legions of comics cognescenti, funny papers purple Kool-Aid drinkers and cartoon true believers than anyone else. Simply put, Bloom County reached the people who got it.

The only thing about Jim Davis that true comic strippers might covet is his bank account. However, they'd give their first born, their right leg and a duffle bag full of federal bail out cash to be able to create anything as good as Breathed's Bloom County. They know where the grown ups went to read the funny papers. Again, it was never kiddie stuff.

One of the other amazing things about B. Co. was that it just kept getting better and better, panel by panel, day by day, year by year, throughout the entire 1980's, ripening like a big, fat, sweet melon. It was like a roller coaster ride that just seemed to never end. Almost.

Sadly, that horrible, inevitable ending did come and Bloom County breathed it's last on August 6th, 1989. Breathed had announced he was going to do what no other 'toonist had ever done before. He was going to quit his mega-popular, extremely lucrative daily strip while it was at the top. Wow. Fans didn’t see that coming.

The last strip appeared on a Sunday and showed an empty, abandoned Bloom County. Everyone had left, everyone except for Opus, who was shown sadly walking off into the distance, dragging his suitcase…I cried like a 9 year old girl.

But hope abounded...Breathed announced he would start another strip as a Sunday-only color feature named Outland, and with Opus the penguin as the primary character! Yeah! Purists got excited all over again! However, I have to temper this triumph a bit here; I’d bit lying if I said the result wasn’t a bit anticlimactic. Outland was good, and sometimes even great, but it always seemed a few beats off the old Bloom County it evolved from. But it was all we had, so we embraced it and kept on reading. After all, Outland as three quarters of Bloom County was better than no Bloom County at all, right? Right!

Well, this permutation of B. Co. ran until March of 1995, when Breathed again announced he would be ceasing his feature. This time, he seemingly pulled the plug for good. The last strip showed Bill the Cat holding photos of Opus, finally back in his natural environment, hugging his long lost Mother. The photos were labeled 'Home,' ‘Mom’ and 'Goodbye.'

Oof. Man, that strip was emotional for me. Comic strips with ugly cats and naive penguins shouldn't make you cry. But this one did. I cried again, but this time like a 5 year-old girl. All his fans cried. Editors cried. Clouds darkened the horizon. Hope died an ugly death. Economies collapsed. Cows belched. Oh, it was simply horrific.

It was bad enough that The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were all ending that same year, but Opus was leaving for good, too? This was a triple nuclear blow. Japan didn't even get hit this bad. I thought the comics would never recover. Hagar the Horrible and Blondie forever? I pretty much abandoned the funny papers after that.

But then in early 2003 word came that Breathed might be resurrecting his famed penguin for yet ANOTHER strip! Could it really be!? Opus returns!? Hope abounded again! Clouds parted! Wall Street reopened! Cows belched! Oh, it was simply euphoric!

And sure enough, on November 23, 2003, IT happened. Opus the strip gloriously appeared and graced the funny pages with our favorite penguin one more time! And with a sharper wit and in a much improved artistic environment, fans thought the second coming of Bloom County had finally arrived! Yeah!

Well, let's just say that it was a hell of an attempt.

The fact is, after Bloom County ended, it was just never the same in either Outland or Opus. This wasn't the fault of Berke Breathed, it was just that an unavoidable recipe of specific issues condemned these second and third efforts to 'near' success.

You see, time had gone by. And a lot of it, too. Bloom County was wonderful, but it was an eternal product of the era in which it bloomed (sorry). Quite simply, Bloom County was the 1980's. Nothing wrong with that, I love the '80's. But even Sir Breathed himself acknowledged how tied B. Co. was to the Reagan era, which is why he never allowed any of his cartoon book collections to be reprinted.

Also, more importantly, by giving up the black & white daily strips, Breathed lost the narrative that made B. Co. work so well. With only one day's strip to begin, flesh out and resolve a story or joke, it's hard to set a lot of fires. The best you can hope for is probably the occasional controversy. He did that, but not much else.

Opus, as well as Outland before it, suffered because it was constantly compared to that which went before it, specifically Bloom County. And it isn’t fair to compare either Outland or Opus to Bloom County - they weren't even the same format and they lived in totally different times.

But even if the latter versions lacked the easy flowing narrative or the richly ridiculous storylines the former possessed, they were still Bloom County, if only in spirit, not in execution. Unfortunately they never achieved the same following or popularity that B. Co. did and seemed destined to peter out someday, no matter how much we didn't want that to happen.

Well, a month or so ago, Breathed announced he would no longer continue Opus. He stated it would end on Nov. 2, 2008 because he could not stand the thought of drawing his character in the near future when, as he described it, America will be struggling under very harsh and mean spirited times. He simply didn't want Opus to become a prop for continuous, pointed attacks or degenerate into a cynical mouthpiece streaming venom and outrage.

I tend to agree. There’s nothing very funny about Michael Moore, either. And Breathed knows Opus best, so if he thinks our squat, innocent little hero has reached his time to shake off this comic coil, who am I to disagree?

But nevertheless I am saddened. I have been trying to prepare for this long goodbye as well as I could, but I really don’t know how. If it is the end, the real end, this means there will be no Steve Dallas, Opus or Bill the Cat in our lives for the first time since 1980. 28 years. Wow. That is hard for me to wrap my mind around. But it seems to be the truth.

I know it might be hard to understand why a 41 year old man sounds like such an adolescent fanboy over a silly comic strip, but that’s the way I’m wired, I guess. Geez…the truth comes out at last. I am a comics geek.

In fact, I even participated in Breathed’s online contest to predict where Opus will spend his final eternity, to be revealed in the final strip. The last few months of the feature have indicated Opus is free to decide what his eternity will be. Communicating with his own cartoonist as his Creator, Opus was advised to ‘choose wisely.’ I think he has. My prediction? I said he would forgo the paradises of Tahitian Islands and dandelion patches, instead slipping into the childrens' book “Goodnight Moon.”

I figured this mainly because Breathed is quitting his comic strip to focus solely on illustrating and writing children’s books (a passion, apparently, as he has already done several others in the last few years). Breathed has also stated his favorite children’s book is the classic “Goodnight Moon.” The cover of this book appeared on Opus’ wall a few weeks ago as a painting and Opus has referenced his eternal fate with the euphemism ‘goodnight’ many times - more pieces of evidence. Could I be right? We'll see on Nov. 3rd. At any rate, it was just a guess.

Anyway, today I visited Salon.com and saw the second to last Opus. (The last strip will appear online only, so today is presumably the last paper printing we will ever see of Breathed's comic art.) Steve Dallas starred in it and in a poignant scene he witnessed the ghosts of Cutter John, Portnoy, Milo, Oliver, Binkley and Bill the Cat waving goodbye as they disappeared forever into the night.

Steve had been told the week before that Opus had chosen wisely, so this week Steve was racing off to find him. In the last panel of today’s strip, Steve is standing, looking into the Animal Shelter cell Opus had been occupying. Opus’ trademark red bow tie had been taken off and was hanging on the chain link fence door. The look on Steve’s face was one of amazement, puzzlement and had a hint of ‘farewell.’

Damn. It is coming. It is nearly over. I swear I cried again. Although the strip said "Cont ~" at the bottom, it is clear 99.9999% of all of Breathed’s cartoon work now belongs to history. There is only one strip left. It appears a week from today. Then, no more. Forever. I will cry again and who knows how old the damn little girl's gonna be this time.

This hurts. Really hurts. Maybe it’s because Bloom County in all of its forms represented a part of my youth that is finally gone forever. Maybe it's because I'll miss his characters like old friends. Maybe it's because I know nothing this good will ever come this way again, especially considering the future of the newpaper industry and ostensibly the comics page. Ah, the fact is all are true.

So, here it is. After 28 years, it has come down to this one last goodbye. The real goodbye.

If it must be, it must be.

Farewell, Opus, Bill and Steve and the rest. I will cherish and take to my grave the enduring and wonderful memories of the most creative and consistently hilarious strip I have ever seen and the best characters I have ever known. And to you Mr. Breathed, all I can do is thank you. I hate to sound like some pandering fanboy, but since I already do at this point, screw it.

You are simply the one cartoonist that, in my opinion, got it. You are our generation's turn at greatness. Your wit, your art, your writing, your humor...all without peer. But it was your characters and the truth they held within them, that was the gold key that made the beautiful engine of your creation run so smoothly.

Thank you, for an amazing ride.

If the readers out there don't know what I'm talking about, go get the Bloom County and Outland books and read them through. Then go to Salon.com and read Opus through start to finish. It is amazing to see the journey of a short, squat, mal-proportioned penguin evolve from the three-day-joke of a character he was originally intended to be into a lifetime career defining icon.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Mr. Breathed will change his mind in another 8 to 10 years. Sure, stopping and starting your strips 2 and 3 times over is one higgledy piggledy way to run a career, but it seems to work for the man. Let's pray it happens one more time.

But if not, so be it. Either way, I'm glad I got to be a part of it every morning, Sunday or otherwise, for 28 years.

Thanks for the memories, Berke.

Until the next goodbye, "Oop! Ack! Thpbbbt!"