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Who says comic strips have to run every day?
I think Berkley Breathed's "Opus," which runs only on Sundays (in color, I might add), is one of the more unappreciated efforts in today's ongoing funny-page follies, in which cartoonists are forced to crrrrrrrank out lame jokes and repetitive scenarios, while their space shrinks again and again.
You remember Opus, dontcha? He was the whimsical penguin who served as the glue holding together one of the greatest comic strips of all time (in my humble opinion), "Bloom County." Where Gary Trudeau uses "Doonesbury" to satirize America, Breathed used "Bloom Country" to poke fun at Americans. His skewed view of our weaknesses and foibles was more touching and sincere, I would argue, than most stuff on the funnies page.
Breathed long complained about churning out strip after strip,and I guess he's been able to make do with a Sundays-only thing. "Bloom Country" morphed into "Outland" which transmogrified itself, eventually, into "Opus," which, by and large, is "Bloom Country" writ large, with more interesting art and a little more thought put into it.
Look it's tough for these cartoonists. They catch fire for a while and face burn out by the never-ending demand for another strip. Some comics have passed their prime and won't ever catch it again. Others experiment with new ways of doing things, such as taking regular vacation or using a melange of old strips and new, as Lynn Johnston does with "For Better or For Worse." I hope Breathed is able to maintain his current pace.
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