I have good news and bad news about Berke Breathed's return to the comics page with his strip Opus.
The bad news: it's terrible. Somebody said "witty" and Breathed heard "brittle." They beamed "This is a landmark opportunity" and Breathed came away with "Make it ham-handed flummery." I keep thinking about the Sex Pistols' late-90s "reunification" tour, the first of several nostalgia-reapings: Q. Mr. Lydon, why are you and the other sexagenarian Pistols on the stage again, performing full-throated anthems about fatalist nihilism to fans one-third your age? A. Eh, what's this about rebellion? We're here to nick the last bob out of your back pocket, mate.
Breathed, however, has spent the fourteen years since Bloom County making a killing in the author-illustrator role. Who hasn't bought at least one of his books for a loved one at Christmas? Breathed has all the money he needs, so I confess that I don't understand why he's decided to put out a comic that comes off like bad Outland (his second, less successful strip) with watercolor. Unless he just couldn't keep away from the newspaper. But Opus doesn't seem to have been written for the sake of having something to say.
The comic started on November 23rd. Two strips (it's a Sunday-only) have run. The first barely deserved polite chuckles and the second bordered on hostess-repeatedly-telling-bad-jokes-towards-the-end-of-the-party awkward. There's no subtlety: it's as if you went to see Bob Newhart and he decided to stop and turn to the audience every two or three lines to explain what his parody was about and why it was particularly funny. Even more disturbing is the strange, over-the-top comic violence for both Sundays. While, presumably, Opus is the strip's eponym because through the years of Bloom he became Breathed's favorite, I already have that chilling feeling that the artist-writer-director is no longer attached to his character. Ever watch a movie or play, or read a book where the actors are forever one-dimensional, combination pawns-and-punching-bags? I don't know about you, but Voltaire's Candide went incredibly unread by me when I reached sophist Pangloss' wry, dada resurrection - it was the breaking point of trudging through an arrogant snoot's obsessive torment of wind-up, human mockeries. Seeing self-humor through fiction is okay; watching a writer act like a rotten brat tossing around his toys, only because he can, is not.
They say Voltaire converted on his deathbed. Smart guy, the jackass.
Breathed, in turn, ended last Sunday's strip with Opus, literally torn to shreds by contrived, contemporary vagaries of life that looked like they were lifted from Newsweek's "Periscope." Opus, shattered by overrated-yet-elusive, modern, domestic living. There's a fresh concept, not at all made fatally obsolete by the "happenings" of the last two years - and narrated in a meaningful way, to boot.
Thanks, but no. Really. I'm done. Only one strip in the past twenty years has been good enough to hold the top-half, first page of nearly every major newspaper's Sunday comic section - and that guy knew when to shelve the inkstand.
So, now, the good news: my appreciation for Breathed's brilliant Bloom County has increased tenfold. I'll be buying books for my own. And I've turned to another example of political satire as art: Pogo. Old Pogo. It's a cross between the Bible and a Magic Eight-Ball for tenderhearted burlesque. I swear - I opened one of Walt Kelly's books just now, flipped a couple of pages and bang, protagonist Albert the Alligator sums up Breathed's totally unnecessary, inexplicable addition of a lousy chapter to his career. (Even, odd, even...odd? No!) December 2, 1948:
Read it? Man, how many talents you expect is wrop up in one boy? I only good at writin' - never gives a hoot for readin' what I writes.
But let's hope Breathed does manage to give Opus a good, long look - so he can see what we see, dump the loser and get back to watercolor whimsy for children, both of age and at heart.
OTHER THOUGHTS: The good Captain will give it a chance, while Ilyka plans to give it a wide berth.