Berkeley Breathed, Creator of Bloom County and Outland
4 April 2003
There is something exciting to cheer about in the comics, or should we say, to cheer about again. Eight years after the end of the beloved Bloom County and the subsequent Outland’s run, the high-spirited comic strips are making a repeat performance. Ucomics.com began distributing Berkeley Breathed’s famous comic duo of Opus and Bill on their website on March 17th, 2003 with hefty doses of penguin sarcasm and hairball comments to be savoured every week.
Bloom County and Outland’s creator had not been an avid newspaper comic fan when he took up a career in cartooning. On scrutinizing the funny pages, he found that "It needed a little kick in the ass, and nobody was doing it." *(1 Interview with The Onion on August 15, 2001.) Berke devised Bloom County with a quirky and entertaining cast of characters: a naïve talking penguin named Opus, a hairball-gagging scrawny tomcat named Bill and Ronald Ann, a curious but grim little girl with an oversized head and straw-like pigtails. As a fan of Gary Trudeau’s work in Doonesbury, Berke’s Bloom County had a similar barbed outlook and style, but was less political and used more fantasy.
Berke included Steve Dallas and Cutter John in Bloom County, two characters he created for his student newspaper cartoon, Academia Waltz. Academia Waltz ran in the Daily Texan of the University of Texas from 1978 to 1979. Berke created the voluminous number of 658 strips for the paper in that short time span. He was also a photographer and writer for the Daily Texan. *(2) Bloomcounty.com
Bloom County took its position on the funny pages on December 8, 1980 under the syndication of the Washington Post Writers Group. The syndicate editors saw the cartoon work of Berkeley Breathed through two published books of Academia Waltz, and he was commissioned as their first syndicated cartoonist. (They usually syndicated only political writers.) Bloom County took over the Washington Post newspaper slot left empty when Gary Trudeau took Doonesbury to a competing publication.
In 1987, the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning was awarded to Berke for his top-notch work in Bloom County. Two years later on August 6, 1989, the cartoonist retired the comic strip from the funny pages. At the time of ending, Bloom County reached a pinnacle with the hugely successful number of 1200 newspapers around the globe.
Under the Universal Syndicate, Berke began a second comic. Outland, a weird and far-fetched strip debuted as a Sunday-only with Ronald Ann plus new characters and format. Gradually, the other characters from Bloom County made their way into Outland, but the strip didn’t catch on with comics fans as well as the first. He stopped creating Outland in 1995. Outland and Bloom County have been published in eleven best-selling cartoon collections with almost seven million copies in print.
As his tremendously funny and original comic strips developed, Berke was accused of childishness and juvenile humour. “It’s a flaw of my personality,” he said to The Onion interviewer, “It’s also a result of missing deadlines. Juvenile is always the refuge of the late.”
The state of comics pages today does not impress the experienced cartoonist. Berke told The Onion, “Pity the poor modern comic page. Frames the size of thumbnails… Now it’s just a page of inky blur that only a 10-year-old’s eyes could focus upon.” As for new comics, he noted, “They’re looking for something that’s legible when reproduced smaller than the ingredients label on that teeny-tiny box of Sun Maid Raisins. That eliminates almost everything.” Giving up comic strip cartooning but not his characters, Berke has written five children’s books with Opus as the star in several. “A Wish for Wings that Work,” published in 1991, has become a television special and is available on video. Opus continues to be a splash with fans in merchandise – the stuffed Opus and cards have been available through American Greetings since 1992. Directing for Nickelodeon Family Films, Berke has turned his latest book, “Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big,” into an animated short feature for television. He has also authored articles for many publications, including Life and travel magazines.
Berkeley Breathed and his wife Jody Boyman are vegetarians. In addition, they are activists for animals. They participate organizations such as PETA to bring an awareness of animal abuse to the public, and in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group trying to save the whales and other sea creatures from imminent disaster: http://www.seashepherd.org/main.asp
Jody Boyman is a nature photographer and psychotherapist; clips of her work may be viewed at: http://www.helpinganimals.com/pdfs/savestrays.pdf
In the fall of 2000, Jody participated in a demonstration for Mothers Against Premarin. She was protesting the cruel use of stalls to contain pregnant mares for months at a time to gather urine used in the production of the menopausal drug Premarin.
Berke and Jody are the parents of Sophie, born in 2000 and Milo, born 2002. They reside in southern California.
The Onion interviewer asked Berke, “Have you decided what you want to be when you grow up?” Berke replied, “Dad. The rest is frosting.”
Yep. Sounds like he has grown up.
Get a feel for the true Berke Breathed in his interview with The Onion:
*(1) avclub.theonion.com/avclub (link no longer active)
The new Bloom County website with lots of pages of information and comics:
*2) http://www.bloomcounty.com
The short scoop on Outland and Bloom County:
http://www.toonopedia.com/outland.htm
TheCartoonists.ca