Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} His Kisses Are Dreamy-- But Those Hairballs Down My Cleavage--! Another Tender Outland Collection by BREATHED, Berke 1957- PERSONAL: Surname rhymes with "method"; born June 21, 1957, in Encino, CA; son of John W. (an oil equipment executive) and Martha Jane (Martin) Breathed; married Jody Boyman (a photographer), May, 1986; children: two. Education: University of Texas at Austin, B.A., 1979. Politics: "Middlewinger." ADDRESSES: Home —Southern CA. Agent —Esther Newberg, ICM, 40 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. CAREER: Cartoonist and writer. University of Texas at Austin, photographer and columnist for Daily Texan (university newspaper), 1976–78; freelance cartoonist, 1978–. AWARDS, HONORS: Harry A. Schweikert, Jr., Disability Awareness Award, Paralyzed Vets of America, 1982, and Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, 1987, both for "Bloom County"; Fund for Animal Genesis Award, 1990, for "outstanding cartoonist focusing on animal welfare issues." WRITINGS: FOR CHILDREN. A Wish for Wings that Work: An Opus Christmas Story , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1991. The Last Basselope: One Ferocious Story , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992. Goodnight Opus , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1993. Red Ranger Came Calling: A Guaranteed True Christmas Story , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994. Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big: Explained by Fannie Fudwupper , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2000. Flawed Dogs: The Year-end Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003. CARTOON COLLECTIONS. Bloom County: Loose Tails , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1983. 'Toons for Our Times: A Bloom County Book of Heavy Metal Rump 'n' Roll , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1984. Penguin Dreams, and Stranger Things , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1985. Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1986. Billy and the Boingers Bootleg , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1987. Tales Too Ticklish to Tell , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1988. Night of the Mary Kay Commandos: Featuring Smell-O-Toons , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1989. Classics of Western Literature: Bloom County, 1986–1989 , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1990. Happy Trails , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1990. Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect: The First Outland Collection , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992. His Kisses Are Dreamy—But Those Hairballs down My Cleavage , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994. The Romantic Opus 'n' Bill , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994. One Last Little Peek, 1980–1995: The Final Strips, the Special Hits, the Inside Tips , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995. Opus: Twenty-five Years of His Sunday Best , Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004. Creator of comic strips "The Academia Waltz," for Daily Texan , 1978–79, "Bloom County," for syndication by Washington Post Writer's Group, 1980–89, "Opus Goes Home," for Life , 1987, and Sunday-only strips "Outland," 1989–95, and "Opus," 2003–. Contributor of illustrations to The Emperor , 1998. ADAPTATIONS: A Wish for Wings that Work: An Opus Christmas Story was adapted as a CBS-TV special and released on videocassette; Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big: Explained by Fannie Fudwupper was adapted as an animated short film for Nickelodeon Family Films; Red Ranger Came Calling: A Guaranteed True Christmas Story was adapted as a musical. WORK IN PROGRESS: Writing an "Opus" feature film. SIDELIGHTS: Writing and illustrating the popular and satirical "Bloom County" comic strip beginning in 1980, Berke Breathed became one of the country's most popular newspaper cartoonists, winning the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. After 1989, when he retired the curious cast of characters that inhabited "Bloom County," Breathed wrote and illustrated the "Outland" strip, which appeared weekly in the Sunday comics until the spring of 1995, and in 2003 again made a showing on the comics page with "Opus." Beginning in 1991 Breathed also embarked on a second career: as a children's book author, and with titles such as Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big: Explained by Fannie Fudwupper and Red Ranger Came Calling: A Guaranteed True Christmas Story has earned a new set of younger fans. Breathed was born in Encino, California, in 1957, and after high school attended the University of Texas at Austin. In college he began a comic strip "because it was the most effective way to make a point and get people listening," Breathed told an interviewer in Comics Journal . While his overactive imagination may have gotten him into trouble as a child, as a cartoonist it became an asset, and he began working for the Daily Texan , his college school paper, in 1976 as a writer, photographer, and columnist. "I loved the idea of expressing myself in a mass medium … [and] when you drew a figure next to your words, it had an element of attraction for people that was unimaginable to me at the time." During his senior year of college, Breathed approached several newspaper syndicates—companies that market articles, columns, and cartoons to a wide variety of newspapers at the same time—with samples of his work in the hope that he could find a new outlet for his cartoons. A year later he got a call from Al Leeds at the Washington Post , who commissioned the young cartoonist to create a new comic strip for the paper. Breathed's "Bloom County" debuted in newspapers in 1980. Irreverent in tone, "Bloom County" boasts a quirky cast of characters that included scruffy Bill the Cat, who constantly "Ack!"s up hairballs; Opus the over-anxious penguin; and humans such as lowlife lawyer Steve Dallas, scientific whiz-kid Oliver Wendell Jones, disabled Vietnam veteran Cutter John, wimpy ten-year-old Michael Binkley, and ever-gloomy child-entrepreneur Milo Bloom. Touted by many critics as the comic strip of the 1980s, "Bloom County" gained a strong readership and Breathed received letters from loyal fans and offended detractors alike. By the end of the strip's almost-decade-long run, the Pulitzer Prizewinning "Bloom County" was carried in 1,300 newspapers nationwide and reached an estimated forty million readers. In addition, book collections of Breathed's strip sold in the millions of copies, while "Bloom County" critters appeared in numerous spin-off products, from T-shirts to stuffed animals. "Breathed's wildly successful comic strip … was like no strip before or since," explained Tasha Robinson on the Onion A.V. Club Web site . Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness collects the first five years of Breathed's popular strip, and a thumb through its pages reveals how each of the characters—as well as the strip's overall sarcastic slant—developed over time. Breathed "quickly hit his stride," noted Charles Solomon in the Los Angeles Times Book Review , "and turned his strip into something unique." Solomon also praised Breathed's strong characterizations, his improving artistic abilities, and the barbed wit that made "Bloom County" "one of the funniest and most relevant strips" in the newspaper. Billy and the Boingers Bootleg collects the next batch of antics from the "Bloom County" gang. Poking fun at everything from movie stars and espionage rings to heavy metal music—Bill the Cat and his band the Boingers doing a feral rendition of "Deathtongue" are among those images brought to life by a pen heavily inked with satire— Billy and the Boingers Bootleg was sought out by the cartoonist's fans. In Tales Too Ticklish to Tell Bill the Cat trades in his amplified guitar for a microphone, a teleprompter, and a hat, and now passes as the televangelist "Fundamentally Oral Bill." Conversion of all of "Bloom County" quickly follows; just as quick is its "deconversion" when the entire list of comic characters decides to go on strike, demanding an end to crowded conditions in their small strip in the newspaper. Other collections include Night of the Mary Kay Commandos: Featuring Smell-O-Toons and Happy Trails . In the first volume the 1988 election sees Bill the Cat and Opus the penguin (not surprisingly) beaten at the polls, while steps are taken to break failed candidate Opus's mom out of the headquarters of Mary Kay Cosmetics, where she is in peril of being used for cosmetic testing. In Happy Trails , the last of the "Bloom County" books, characters indulge in one last round of sarcasm during a theatrical "wrap" party celebrating the end of their long-running performance. In the bittersweet final strip, Opus the Penguin abandons his regular haunts and, suitcases in hand, walks off the edge of the page. "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon," Breathed was quoted as saying in Newsweek while explaining his decision to end the strip in August of 1989. "The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age even less gracefully than their creators. 'Bloom County' is retiring before the stretch marks show." Fortunately for Breathed's fans, he quickly hit the presses with a new comic strip, the weekly "Outland," which appeared in the Sunday color supplements. Although it contained a different cast of characters, the first anthology of "Outland" comics, Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect: The First Outland Collection , showed, from its very title, that "Outland" covered the same territory—and stepped on the same sets of toes—as "Bloom County" had. While Breathed ended "Outland" in 1995, he returned to comics in 2003 with his syndicated Sunday strip "Opus," featuring one of "Bloom County"'s favorite characters. The character of Opus the penguin has also made an appearance in the first of several books Breathed has written and illustrated for children. In 1991's A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story Breathed tells of the penguin's desire to use his wings the same way other birds do: to fly. Opus gets his wish in a roundabout way after his swimming skills get Santa and his sleigh full of goodies out of a lake after a piece of the sleigh's harness snaps. Although some reviewers were disappointed that the book does not contain the sarcasm of "Bloom County," others wrote that A Wish for Wings That Work has a tone that is more appropriate for young readers. In Publishers Weekly a reviewer praised the book as one that "little ones will love for its own magic and logic." Geared for slightly older readers, The Last Basselope: One Ferocious Story finds the sturdy penguin and his friends in a dark, creepy forest during a search for a ferocious and legendary beast. With vivid, full-color, full-page airbrushed illustrations, The Last Basselope lets readers follow Opus the "Great and Famous Discoverer" and his comrades—several characters from "Outland" along with the rangy Bill the Cat—as they hunt down and corner the terrible Basselope, only to discover … a quiet basset hound burdened with a set of ten-times-too-large antlers and an allergy to dandelions. Ilene Cooper, writing in Booklist , praised Breathed's "dramatic, full-color" illustrations as "eyepopping" but found that the story "falls curiously flat." More enthusiastic, Lisa Dennis noted in School Library Journal that older children will appreciate the author's "delightfully sarcastic and sophisticated" humor while younger readers may enjoy the book's "sheer silliness." Goodnight Opus is a parody of Margaret Wise Brown's classic children's story Goodnight Moon . In the book Opus listens to a favorite bedtime story read by his grandmother. When sleep and a vivid imagination carry the penguin away on a fantastic journey through the night, Opus joins such fantastic creatures as a pillow with a balloon for a head and a purple snorklewacker on a flying three-wheeler. On a voyage to see the cows of the Milky Way, the trio visits everyone from Abe Lincoln to the tooth fairy during their dreamtime trip. While Lisa Dennis commented in School Library Journal that the book is "less sarcastic than that of his cartoon collections," other reviewers still detected the presence of Breathed's incorrigible sarcastic humor in the author's work. Fellow cartoonist Gahan Wilson commented in the New York Times Book Review that Goodnight Opus "is so well disguised as a children's book that I suspect it will be purchased and actually read aloud to children by many people who would, if they understood it, burn the thing on sight…. I highly recommend this book." A young disbeliever gives Santa one last chance in Red Ranger Came Calling , published as a tribute to Breathed's father in 1994. The book takes place in 1939, when nine-year-old "Red" Breathed lives for the day when he will be the proud and rightful owner of an Official Buck Tweed Two- Speed Crime-Stopper Star-Hopper bicycle. When he is sent to spend Christmas with his aunt at her island home Red knows that all his pleas to his now-absent parents have been wasted. His only hope now lies with a mysterious toothless oldster who Red figures may or may not be Santa Claus; floating old gentlemen who look suspiciously elf-like and the granting of a small wish make Red suspect the old fellow is for real, and he makes his demands. When Christmas morning dawns and there is no cycle in site, the boy chalks it up to another case of being let down by grown-ups. However, Breathed's surprise ending "reaffirm[s] a reader's belief in the spirit that is Santa," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Booklist critic Carolyn Phelan hailed Breathed's "extraordinary full-color illustrations [that] seem three-dimensional," and concluded that Red Ranger Came Calling is "a most original Christmas book." With Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big Breathed creates a new cast of characters to tell a cautionary tale about lying. The young, and very unpleasant, boy in question "gets out of many sticky situations by telling whoppers in this rhyming tale related by his neglected little sister," explained Ronald Jobe in a School Library Journal review. Though a critic for Publishers Weekly characterized the tone of the story, like its artwork, as "mean-spirited and unfunny," Jobe found more to like. "This is a highly moralistic tale, but a wildly zany one," the critic wrote, extending special praise to the author/illustrator's "wordplay, alliteration, and outrageously expressive" illustrations. Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound is a poignant plea for better treatment of animals couched in a humorous story. "To the casual browser, the book is a rogue's gallery of unlovely pets," explained a reviewer for Publishers Weekly . Marge Loch-Wouters, writing in School Library Journal , noted that children "may enjoy the goofy humor and outrageousness of the poor unwanted pooches" in Breathed's catalogue of the current residents of a Vermont animal shelter that stands as the last chance for a home for a wide assortment of misaligned, misbehaving, and mistreated pooches. Along with Breathed's picture of each "too colorful, too gassy, too long, too hairy" dog, as Loch Wouters described them, the author includes a sad life history, told in rhyme. While the overall effect of the book is humorous, Breathed concludes with a plea for readers to adopt pets at their local animal shelters. Breathed has remarked that illustrating children's books requires a different approach than cartooning, but cited the Dr. Seuss books, Jules Feifer's illustra-tions for Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth , and other examples as influences on both types of work. However, talking with Jesse Jarnow for Salon.com , the cartoonist noted that "painting picture books necessitated me actually learning something about art. And like a baby armed with a new box of colorful crayons and a newly painted living room wall … I'm anxious to wreak some havoc." BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: PERIODICALS. Booklist , January 1, 1994, Janice Del Negro, review of Goodnight Opus , p. 832; October 1, 1994, Carolyn Phelan, review of Red Ranger Came Calling: A Guaranteed True Christmas Story , p. 325. Christian Science Monitor , February 8, 2001, May Wiltenburg, "Cartoonist Berke Breathed," p. 23. Comics Journal , October, 1988, "Interview: Can Breathed Be Taken Seriously?" Los Angeles Times , November 26, 1987. Los Angeles Times Book Review , May 15, 1983; May 13, 1984; October 5, 1986; April 15, 1990, Charles Solomon, review of Happy Trails , p. 15. Newsweek , May 15, 1989; September 22, 2003, Dana Thomas and Brad Stone, interview with Breathed, p. 103. New Tekniques , September, 2000, "Tarradiddle Pants on Fire" (interview), p. 8. People , August 6, 1984, Gail Buchalter, "Cartoonist Berke Breathed Feathers His Nest by Populating Bloom County with Rare Birds," p. 93. Psychology Today , January-February, 2004, William Whitney, "Berkeley Breathed," p. 96. Publishers Weekly , July 25, 1991, review of A Wish for Wings that Work: An Opus Christmas Story , p. 52; November 2, 1992, review of The Last Basselope , p. 68; September 19, 1994, review of Red Ranger Came Calling , p. 28; August 28, 2000, review of Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big: Explained by Fannie Fudwupper , p. 82; November 24, 2003, review of Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound , p. 62. School Library Journal , November, 2000, Ronald Jobe, review of Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big , p. 110; January, 2004, Marge Loch- Wouters, review of Flawed Dogs , p. 88. Outland (comic strip) Outland was a Sunday-only comic strip written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed from 1989 until 1995. It was a spin-off of Breathed's strip Bloom County , featuring many of the same characters. Contents. Overview. On September 3, 1989, a month after retiring Bloom County , Breathed began his second syndicated strip with a minor character from the previous strip. Ronald-Ann Smith, a little girl from the "wrong side of the tracks" in Bloom County, entered a magic doorway in a grimy alley that looked down into a cheery world of "cotton-candy trees" known as the Outland (the ground of her world did not align with that of Outland, so the door originally appears to be hovering in the sky above it). In its earliest form, Outland had been intended to be an experimental strip for Breathed, featuring a channel for creativity in the forms of new characters (such as Mortimer Mouse, based on the rejected name for Disney's Mickey Mouse) and bizarre backgrounds (many of which initially resembled those seen in Krazy Kat ). However, Opus the Penguin returned in the strip's third installment, and Bill the Cat appeared months after that. Before long, the premise of another world beyond a magic door had been lost completely. Breathed wrote that the strip became "Bloom County without the continuing narrative that a daily appearance allows" in the first Outland book collection. Other characters from Bloom County , such as Milquetoast the Cockroach, Steve Dallas, Oliver Wendell Jones, and Michael Binkley, became major players in the strip. Some characters, such as Cutter John, made an occasional guest appearance. A few prominent members of Bloom County , such as Milo Bloom, did not make an active appearance at all (Milo did appear in the second-to-last installment of Outland , as a background extra on a bus). In 1991, Breathed wrote a children's Christmas book entitled A Wish for Wings That Work . The story revolved around Opus and included several Outland characters (although the Outland itself was not explicitly referenced in the story). It was made into an animated television movie that same year. Finally, on March 26, 1995, Breathed decided to end the strip and retire from cartooning. At the strip's end, Steve Dallas came out as Gay, and eloped to California with Mark Slackmeyer from the comic strip Doonesbury . Opus returned to Antarctica to live with his mother, whom he had finally located (some story arcs of the original comic Bloom County focused on his quest to find her). Eight years later, Breathed abandoned retirement and picked up where Outland had left off. The result was the Sunday-only reunion strip, Opus . Recurring characters. Reprints. Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect (1992) His Kisses are Dreamy. but Those Hairballs Down my Cleavage. (1994) One Last Little Peek, 1980-1995: The Final Strips, the Special Hits, the Inside Tips (1995) Outland: The Complete Library – Sunday Comics: 1989-1995 (2012) Many Outland strips have never been reprinted in color, though all appeared in black & white in Comics Revue magazine. Outland strips also appeared in the 2004 book Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best , which reprinted strips from Bloom County and the new Opus strip as well. Berkeley Breathed. Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (born June 21, 1957) is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County , a 1980s cartoon-comic strip that dealt with sociopolitical issues as understood by fanciful characters (e.g., Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and through humorous analogies. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. Contents. Early life. Cartooning career. Breathed became published first when he was hired part-time by the Austin American-Statesman to draw editorial cartoons for the newspaper. This job was short-lived; he was dismissed shortly after one of his cartoons caused outrage. [3] His first comic strip published regularly was The Academia Waltz, which appeared in the Daily Texan , in 1978 while he was a student at the University of Texas. While at the University of Texas, Breathed self-published two collections of The Academia Waltz , using the profits to pay his tuition. The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of The Washington Post , who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam war veteran Cutter John. In the beginning, the strip's style was so similar to that of another popular strip, Doonesbury , that Doonesbury's creator Garry Trudeau wrote to Breathed several times to indicate their similarities. [4] Breathed has acknowledged that he borrowed liberally from Doonesbury during his early career. In the Outland collection, One Last Little Peek , Breathed even put an early Bloom County side-by-side with the Doonesbury comic strip from which it obviously took its idea. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning during 1987. [5] The strip eventually appeared in over 1,200 newspapers around the world until Breathed retired the daily strip in 1989, stating that he wanted to terminate the strip while it was still popular. At that time, he said, "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon. The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age less gracefully than their creators". [6] He replaced this strip with the surreal Sunday-only cartoon Outland in 1989, which reused some of the Bloom County characters, including Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat. He ended Outland in 1995. In 2003, Breathed began the comic strip Opus , a Sunday-only strip featuring Opus the Penguin, who was one of the main characters of Bloom County . Several newspapers chose not to run the August 26, 2007, Opus cartoon because it might offend Muslims. [7] On October 6, 2008, Breathed announced plans to discontinue all work on comic strips with the final Opus strip to run on November 2, 2008. [8] Breathed plans to focus on writing children's books. [2] Breathed explained that he felt that the United States was going to face "tough times", and that he wanted to end the saga of his most memorable character "on a lighter note". The last Opus comic strip appeared on schedule, but in what may be a comic first the final panel required an online link. The final panel the strip showed Opus sleeping peacefully in the bed depicted in the classic children's book, Goodnight Moon . This panel was available only online, and the Humane Society page that displayed it no longer exists. Breathed said that he had no regrets in leaving political cartooning, as he believes the atmosphere became too bitter for him to make quality cartoons. [9] Other works. In addition to his syndicated cartoon work, which has produced eleven best-selling cartoon collections, he has also produced five children's books, two of which, A Wish for Wings That Work and Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big , were made into animated films. Since 1992, he has designed a greeting card and gift ensemble collection for American Greetings, featuring the "Bloom County" characters Opus, Bill the Cat, and Milquetoast the Cockroach. Breathed's writing has also been featured in numerous publications, including Life , Boating , and Travel and Leisure , and he produced the cartoon art for the closing credits of the Texas-based film, Secondhand Lions , which featured a strip called Walter and Jasmine . The panels he drew for Secondhand Lions appear in Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best , in which Breathed terms them "the comic strip that never was". Breathed has been a supporter of the animal rights group PETA and illustrated the cover of their Compassionate Cookbook , T-shirts, and other merchandise. Breathed cameos as himself in the short film Tim Warner: A Life in the Clouds , a fictional tale about an unhappy cartoonist and his unfunny strip, The Silver Lining . [10] Breathed adapted his children's book Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big into a short film produced by Disney. The 2011 motion-capture Disney film Mars Needs Moms was based on Breathed's picture book of the same name. Personal life. Breathed is a fan of outdoor activities such as powerboating and motorcycling. In 1986, he broke his back in an ultralight-plane crash, later incorporated into a Bloom County storyline in which Steve Dallas breaks his back after being attacked by an angry Sean Penn. Breathed also nearly lost his right arm to a boating accident. [4] Breathed and his two children live in Santa Barbara, in southern California. He is reportedly a very private person, and although he has given interviews to online magazines such as The Onion and Salon , he rarely gives face-to-face or telephone interviews and resists talking about himself. He supports animal rights, and his book, Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound , promotes animal adoption. Breathed befriended science fiction humorist Douglas Adams when Adams moved to Santa Barbara in 1999. Adams was also very keen on wildlife preservation. During the middle of September 1990, while visiting a factory in England, Mr. Breathed noticed he received odd, humorous looks from the workers upon hearing his name. After inquiring about the reason for their strange looks, he learned that his nickname, "Berke", is a homophone with "Berk", a vulgar term for a vagina in Cockney rhyming slang ("Berkeley Hunt"). [11] Breathed once stated he is an atheist. [12] On May 18, 2008, in his comic strip Opus , he announced he was suffering from a condition known as spasmodic torticollis. [13] Storytelling, Comedy, Comics, And Film: A Career-Spanning Conversation With Berkeley Breathed. Ever since Bloom County became a sensation in the early '80s, Berkeley Breathed has had an incredibly varied career. He followed Bloom County 's initial success with two more popular comic strips, Outland and Opus ; he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning; he wrote and illustrated best-selling children's books; he adapted his own stories into a pair of animated TV specials, and he provided art for various environmental and animal-welfare charities. In recent years he's shifted his primary focus to film (production art and original projects), while also overseeing IDW's comprehensive collected editions of his strips. He recently teamed with IDW again for Berkeleyworks , a retrospective volume collecting a number of his paintings, sketches, and illustrations – and last month, he made a rare convention appearance, playing to a packed room at San Diego Comic-Con. ComicsAlliance spoke with Breathed about his career in cartooning, his work in other media, and his upcoming projects. ComicsAlliance: You mentioned at San Diego that you weren't originally a huge fan of comic strips, so how did you become a cartoonist? Berkeley Breathed: I'd been fired as a photographer from the student newspaper at the U of Texas. Since I couldn't resist making facts up in news stories, the cartooning desk was the final option. CA: Was there a point where you decided (or realized) that this seemed to be turning into an actual profession – something you could do and make a decent living? BB: When I paid for my yearly expenses in my junior year with the sales of the crappy little collection of my cartoons, it dawned on me that there might be a living out of it. If this hadn't happened, I'm quite convinced I'd be a barista at Starbucks at this very moment. CA: One of the trademarks of Bloom County was your willingness to take on public figures and corporations. You parodied ad campaigns, mocked celebrity endorsements, clowned political figures, poked fun at supermarket tabloids… How did you manage to get away with all that? BB: It was shocking only because the internet had yet to be invented. The first few letters from corporate lawyers demanding – at least – that I put a copyright and trademark symbol after any mention of "Whopper" were the first I ignored. My editors panicked. They got used to it. CA: It also seemed that the more outrageous you got, the more popular the strip became – it certainly drew a new kind of attention to the comic section. Doonesbury also tackled current events, but it was generally placed in the style or editorial section, while Bloom County was right in the middle of the "funny pages," shaking up a domain normally reserved for Family Circus and Rex Morgan . Were there moments where you came into conflict with the syndicate in regards to what you could say or do? BB: They were too busy being shocked that they were getting such huge money. This was the Washington Post Syndicate. They didn't have any other strips in more than 20 newspapers. They're still wondering what lightening bolt hit them. CA: Looking back, were there any moments where either you feel you you went too far, or that you didn't push far enough? BB: Moments of creative regret are hard to avoid but better ignored. I'm more astonished that I gave so much attention to those who didn't merit it. Michael Dukakis? CA: Within a few years of starting, Bloom County became a bonafide cultural phenomenon. You won a Pulitzer Prize, the book collections were bestsellers, and then there were T-shirts, coffee mugs, and stuffed animals. Was there any one thing, or one moment, which made you realize how big it had got? BB: The funny thing is that it didn't get as "big" as people think. I never got in the number of papers that the giants were in. On any given day, the readership of The Family Circus was probably bigger. Couldn't touch Garfield . It got the attention, though, of the people who bought books and t-shirts and wrote the articles. The readership was relatively narrow … but very, very intense and loyal and protective. Classic cult characteristics. Calvin & Hobbes had both worlds. Quite a trick. CA: Opus dolls seemed almost like another gag at first, a ridiculous response to the inescapable stuffed Garfields – but they ended up becoming a sensation in their own right. Did you ever have any concerns about Bloom County becoming the sort of over-commercialized property that you so vigorously lampooned? BB: It ran a fine balance. I didn't pretend that I could manage it. I knew that it was weirdly more obnoxious – and presumptuous – to declare yourself above merchandising than to actually do it. An odd oxymoronic situation. [Bill] Watterson's toxic relationship to the idea of a Hobbes doll – given the business he was in – is intriguing. But also dangerously close to perceived self-importance. That's a killer for me. We aren't important at all. It's all just fun, and the moment we think it's more it all goes up and disappears, like smoke. CA: You've worked with a number of non-profits and causes over the years, doing art for The Humane Society, the ASPCA, PETA, and the Sea Shepherd Society among others. Did those organizations approach you, or did you seek out the causes you felt strongly about? BB: Both. Animal welfare is a natural. And it's an easy cause without complicating contradictions. My kind of activism. CA: It's not a stretch to say that Opus is your most popular and well-known character, but you've said that he was originally intended to just be the set-up for a week or so of gags. Why did you decide to keep him around? BB: Even before email, and in a roach infested apartment in Iowa, I could sense the reaction. I got actual letters in those days. The reaction was immediate. The only thing I knew is that if I'd tried to get that reaction, I'd have failed. Everything about my career and the particulars of the strip has been accidental. CA: So have you ever had a moment where you created a character and immediately thought "this is the one"; that you'd come up with a particular crowd-pleaser? BB: Nope. Bill the Cat was a one week throw-away gag to lampoon Garfield. Go figure. I did plenty of characters that never went anywhere. We all did. CA: The original 'Billy & The Boingers Bootleg' collection contained a flexidisc with a pair of tracks "by the band." Did you have any hand in writing or recording those songs? BB: They were found in a Call to Music that I announced in the strip. Thousands of tapes arrived. I could only listen to a tiny portion. They were the funniest. CA: Once Bloom County wrapped, you transitioned almost immediately into doing Outland – which started out as a whole separate world, but ended up running off in its own direction, incorporating characters like Bill and Opus, and following up threads from Bloom County . Was that the plan from the get-go, or did it just develop naturally as it went on? BB: Artists – especially musical artists – universally assume that their fans will follow wherever they go as they start exploring. Wrong. We all get bitch-slapped by the fussiness of our original fans. Then we have only one response: humility. And thankfulness that we have fans at all. Please them. The popular art world isn't about pleasing yourself, despite the blather that it is. CA: After Outland , you spent eight years away from newspapers, before returning with Opus , which ran from 2003-2008. You'd established a second career for yourself as an author and illustrator of children's books, so what made you want to return to comics? BB: Missed the voice. I knew the door was closing, culturally, but I wanted to have a little fun before it shut. Which it did. CA: So far as picture books go, are there any creators you'd cite as particular inspirations? BB: I was only influenced by Chris Van Allsburg. Funny, because he wasn't funny. But his drawings inspired me to draw better. I added the humor he avoided and voila! CA: You've done film work, comics, prose, picture books. Does working in different mediums satisfy different creative urges? BB: Storytelling is my calling. The comics satisfied that in a small way. The picture books were only ways to tell a story better told in moving pictures. Nearly all the books were simply storyboards for TV or movies. Nearly all were sold to get developed for that. The stories I think of now bypass books entirely, and the drawings simply are used to sell them as films. That's how I work. CA: One of the things I appreciate most about your cartoons is your sense of comedic timing: setting up a gag, giving yourself the space to deliver it perfectly, and hitting the right beats. Who would you consider to be comedic influences? BB: My friend John Cleese knows precisely how to structure set up, hook and punchline. And he helped me learn that comedy is not about the dialogue. It's the idea. It's the set up. It's the situation. I actually hate writing lines of dialogue and trying to make them funny. Ratatouille is the funniest animated film I've ever seen … and not a single great laugh came from a delivered line. When a health inspector comes to inspect a restaurant, opens the door and sees several hundred rats in the kitchen doing the cooking – and they all stop to look at him – well, the last thing you should do is ruin that moment with a spoken line. CA: You've partnered with IDW to release the complete Bloom County , Outland , and Opus editions. Is it true that editor Scott Dunbier sought you out? Were you familiar with IDW before that point? BB: Never heard of them. Scott Dunbier is a gift to the comics world. I turned him down flat, as I was far too lazy to do the massive work of collecting the 6000 comics that were strewn around my house and the planet. He did it all and told me to relax with an iced tea. CA: Were there any particular surprises that came up while working on the Complete Editions? BB: It was a surprise that so much of Bloom County wasn't as strong as I would have liked. I hadn't read most of it for 25 years. I'd only known what we'd chosen for the small collections each year. Which was the strongest material of course. You can tell why the PR folks at my publishers don't like me talking to the press. CA: You've also published an art retrospective, Berkeleyworks , through IDW. How did that project happen? BB: Scott Dunbier was behind all of it. He's a machine. I hate him because he's got the purest heart of anyone in the business which makes the bastard impossible to turn down. CA: And it was mentioned at SDCC that you've been talked into doing a collection of your pre- Bloom County strip, Academia Waltz ? BB: Talk to Scott. This is the worst idea in the history of career-ending ideas. None of that material should ever be seen. I urge everyone reading this to avoid that book like Ebola. It makes the word "politically incorrect" pale into insignificance. I was 19 when I drew those offensive characters. I was treating the comic page like a kid discovers and treats his genitals at age 13. SDCC: The Last Panel: Berkeley Breathed Sets the Record Straight. "Bloom County" creator Berkeley Breathed shared his 'correspondence' with Bill Watterson in one of Comic-Con International's funniest panels. The mood in Room 9 was expectant, audience members asking each other, "Do you think he'll show?" and, "Will he be here?" It was noon on Sturday, traditionally one of Comic-Con International's biggest days, and it seemed as though all of the people packed into the event billed as "Berkeley Breathed: The Last Comic-Con Panel" expected something to happen; they just weren't sure what. "Bloom County" and "Outland" creator Breathed had not given much to go on in his panel description, but the brief text was tantalizing. "There is unofficial word that he may be revealing recent illicit photos and art of his best friend Bill Watterson, 'borrowed' from the latter's secret retreat in the foothills of Colorado." Breathed took to the podium, accompanied by large entourage of his children, other teenagers, and a woman dressed as Wonder Woman. He stepped up to the microphone and raised his eyebrows. "You think Watterson's gonna show up, don't you?" he asked. "I know how to promote myself. "I want everyone to hold up their right hand and testify that none of this will show up on the Internet. Absolutely swear to God. Nothing on YouTube. No one has these photographs. "Are we full?" Breathed asked. There was only enough space in the room to fit three more people, and while they were being seated, Breathed leaned over and said to his son "It will always end up on YouTube. Watch. I'll check ten minutes after the show. It'll be there." Once the room was filled to capacity, Breathed offered empty seats on the panel to audience members standing outside. He pointed to one seat and said, "This chair is for the guy with the night goggles to see if anyone is filming this secretly. "Was anybody at the speech I gave two years ago here, in a somewhat larger room?" he asked. There was applause. "Cool. Know in advance that you're going to see a few repeat slides. I apologize about that, but it's all toward a larger point." Breathed took a dramatic pause and said, "My heart is heavy for my personal good close friend Bill Watterson. The speech I gave a couple of years ago pretty much covered my career up to that point, lowly as it was, and I don't want to repeat most of that today. I thought that I'd take the opportunity to address a growing controversy and to shoot down and kill the recent spate of vile rumors between Bill and me. There's been forty- two books about Bill, there's been two films, three documentaries. I think this is all very distressing, since I take the art form so seriously." Breathed showed a series of slides featuring books with made up titles like, "For Christ's Sake, Where's Calvin and Hobbes?" "Of course, this ended this last year with 'Dear Mr. Watterson,'" said Breathed, referring to the 2013 documentary film. "Did anybody see this, by the way?" One person applauded. "Probably we would have had a bigger applause if they'd actually found Mr. Watterson," said Breathed. "When they came to me, they said, 'We're going to find him. We're very optimistic about this. The end of the film will be the big reveal, and he's going to talk to us.' And of course, that wasn't likely. "They had celebrities. They had great luminaries of our industry. They had Cathy Guisewite. My friend Charles Solomon, who's a professor of animation and cartooning. They had," Breathed paused, clicking to a slide of Mother Teresa in a Calvin and Hobbes tee-shirt. "And of course, in 1999, Calvin became an official Catholic saint," he said, showing a slide of Pope John Paul II holding a picture of the infamous "Peeing Calvin" knock-off, urinating on a caricature of the devil. "They even conned me into contributing comments, and that was the problem," Breathed said. "It was a problem, because I opened my big mouth as I tend to do, as I made my living doing. I was stupid enough to mention a few critical letters by Bill to me. "They created a slight kerfuffle in the industry media," continued Breathed, as he showed slides of Photoshopped magazines covers implying a feud between himself and Watterson. "I take my business just as seriously as Bill does. I think that there's been some major errors. I'd like to announce the new Kickstarter campaign: 'Dear Mr. Breathed, You're So Fucking Easy to Find.' In it, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to maybe review a few things, maybe talk about a few projects on the way, and yeah, maybe a few dollars will be made out of it. But more importantly, I wanted to address the controversy and set the record straight. "The film is going to have luminaries in our business," he continued, as he began to show a series of Photoshopped celebrity pictures. "I can compete with Bill's film on every level." He finished with a picture of Miley Cyrus striking a pose and looking very similar to Breathed's Bill the Cat. "This is what's going to be in the film. I want to just go over a few things before I get to the controversy. These are a few films that are set up, either in pre-production or in production now. Most of them I can't talk about, and I can't even mention the studio, because that's just the way they are." He showed slides from a project called "Flawed Dogs." "This is about a band of dogs that attack the Westminster Dog Show and set things right," explained Breathed. Breathed showed some slides from a project with the title redacted, which is apparently about a steampunk pig and an elephant. "This is what I'm doing now, by the way, other than cartooning. Most people don't have a post-cartoon life. I'm trying to figure one out. And it is films, which is what I'd always wanted to do. But I put it on hold while I cartooned for twenty five years, which was totally unexpected. So now I'm back doing what I thought I was going to do when I was seventeen, which is an interesting way to conduct a career. "This is another movie that's in development called 'Something About C-Mo.' This is a book that may or may not get published, but the movie is going ahead," Breathed said. It's a story about an alien dog that comes from a planet where the human/dog dynamic is reversed. "I don't believe that anyone's made a really great dog movie in a long time, so I'm intent on doing that." The next slide showed Breathed's Opus and Bill the Cat next to the Gainsborough painting "The Blue Boy." An equal sign hung in the middle. "I think this illustrates my approach to cartooning," he deadpanned. "I take it just as seriously as Bill does. I put it in the lofty pantheon of fine art. He and I are dancing to the same tune." Breathed then told the story of how Watterson and he exchanged a series of letters in the 1980s. Breathed collected them and showed them in his previous Comic-Con panel, illustrating their friendly, often off-color relationship. "When I quit," Breathed said, "it annoyed him. It was bothering both of us that the space was shrinking on the pages. I wasn't coming back up to the daily comic pages. I had given up. So he was a little annoyed that I quit and left him back in the dungeons." Watterson would frequently comment on the merchandising and product generated by "Bloom County," as well as Breathed's business choices. Watterson drew a cartoon of Breathed's character Milquetoast telling Watterson's Hobbes, "Quit the daily papers like I did, buy a boat, blow all your savings. When you run out of gas money, sell your home and move to a smelly pier in Seattle." "It created a little controversy, and it ended with the final cartoon, in which he's suggesting that I bought my Pulitzer with the merchandising. The next frame I'm going to show is my drawing that I sent back to him. I'm going to run by it really fast, so no one has time to take a picture of it and put it on the web, because he would sue me to high heaven," Breathed said. He then flashed the infamous drawing of Hobbes and Bill the Cat in a compromising position with Chic Young's Blondie. He showed it a couple of more times for good measure. "I was forced into merchandising with a gun to my head," Breathed joked. "I gave all the money to. no I didn't give it to charity. It was reasonably tasteful, and I consider cartoons just as classy as he does." "Before I end, this is gonna be quick, and I'll answer some questions and we can get the heck out of here and get some lunch," Breathed promised. "I have a few secret photos from Bill's new life. I don't mean to suggest that this is some sort of payback. I know he's a private person, but I think he wouldn't mind me showing these. "That's his estate," Breathed said, as a photo of a mountain mansion Photoshopped to include a giant flying saucer appeared. "He didn't buy that with just cartooning royalties -- I suspect there was some merchandising, too." Breathed showed a photo of Watterson Photoshopped into a group of blonde, scantily-clad women. "It's the 2012 Tokyo Tattoo Invitational. The Calvin and Hobbes Tattoo Invitational. You would like to think a certain image follows him around, and I can promise, you it's not what you think!" After the slideshow, Breathed talked about his collections that were available through IDW. "There will be some limited merchandise," he said as a final slide appeared: the three speed "Bildo." Breathed introduced his panel, "This is kind of my new family. This is my son and, I don't know if it'll embarrass everybody, Austin, Gigi, Abby, Heather, Zoe and Jill. They are here because they are much better looking than me. I am marrying Wonder Woman in a matter of months." Asked if he would ever reprint his college comic strip from the University of Texas from the 1970s, "Academia Waltz," he replied, "Yes. As a matter of fact, the contract is sitting on my desk right now. I was talked into reproducing these by [IDW's Special Projects Editor] Scott [Dunbier]. Most of them should never see the light of day again, not just because they're drawn horribly but they just represent a sensibility that has rightfully passed." "It got me through Law School," commented an audience member. "I have to thank you for that." "Thank you," replied Breathed. "Do you think they should be reproduced and sold and given to children?" "Well," she replied, "Maybe I'm remembering them better than they were." After a discussion about the status of the Opus pilot and the development troubles that it has faced, Breathed said, "Will there ever be a movie? It'd be a huge roll of the dice, and I'm not sure I want to take it. I'd have to have more control than I had before, and I might have in the future, to be a real producer on it rather than a bullshit producer, which they'd be offering now." "Is there anybody right now that you're reading?" asked an audience member. "In comics?" Breathed asked. "I used to sit down and have lunch with the 'L.A. Times' every single day for two hours, and I can't say that I've done that in years. I am not reading the comic pages anymore. I'm kind of embarrassed by it now, but I got into [comics] in a backdoor way. I didn't get into films, which was where I wanted to be. I just like to tell stories. Comics became a way that someone let me tell stories. I didn't come at it like Bill did, which is a love for the art form, and with a depth that I never competed with. "I'm kidding that I can approach it on any level that he does," Breathed added. "And I respect how he has done it. I think that it is so cool that he has messed with the syndicate. You don't see this in business at all very often. You certainly don't see it outside in this convention center, or anywhere in the popular world, where an artist like Bill comes along and they have on the table almost a half a billion dollars in contracts for merchandise if they would just sign. The syndicate of course, in those days, owned most of 'Calvin and Hobbes.' They were going to get most of that money, and he just said, 'No, I'm going home.' Technically, they had the right to do it anyway. They would have had to face the firestorm of pissing him off. None of us know what happened, because it was all behind the scenes. Those letters he was writing me at the time, all of that was happening then. As he was gently mocking me for doing this stuff, it was because he was on the other side of it, battling to keep from having to do it. "Charles Schulz was the most successful and richest entertainer in history," Breathed continued. "That's the kind of money Bill walked away from. He didn't care. Where do you see that anymore? You don't. I think he's a frigging hero. He can hide as long as he wants. And I apologize for those pictures that are going to be on the web soon, of him with those girls."