Opus (comic strip)

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Opus

Creator(s)	Berkeley Breathed
Status	Running
Syndicate(s)	Washington Post Writers Group
Genre(s)	Humor, Politics, Satire
First strip	November 23, 2003

This page is about the comic strip by Berkeley Breathed. For other uses of the word, please see Opus.

Opus is a weekly (Sunday only) comic strip by Berkeley Breathed. The strip is Breathed's fourth, following The Academia Waltz, Bloom County and Outland.

Set in Bloom County, the strip documents the adventures of Breathed's popular character Opus the Penguin, parodying both pop culture and politics along the way. It was launched with much fanfare on November 23, 2003, and is syndicated by Washington Post Writers Group.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Characters
2 Artwork and Availability
3 The Movie
4 External links

[edit] Characters

[edit] Opus

Opus is the title character and protagonist of the strip. Though he returned to Antarctica at the end of Outland, Opus has since traveled back home to Bloom County, only to find that time has changed everything and everyone he once held dear. His employment usually depends on the week's joke - since Opus began, he has so far been a political operative, a garbageman, and a newspaper ombudsman - but he is most often depicted as a syndicated cartoonist.

While his mother is no longer "long-lost", she wasn't all he had imagined her to be after a decades-long search, and he is frequently seeking the comfort of an ideal mother-figure.

[edit] Regular characters

Bill the Cat - the first of Opus' old friends to re-emerge (just months into the strip), Bill seems to be the only one completely unchanged by time. Still in a state of catatonia, he is occasionally tapped to run for political office but most often seen relaxing by Opus' side.

Steve Dallas - Steve was reintroduced little more than a year in, now having appeared in all four of Breathed's comic strips. Dallas, who had come out as a homosexual at the end of Outland, is back to his chauvinist ways thanks to a values-based program that used shock therapy to melt away his "unnatural" thoughts. Steve's lack of ability to charm women, however, has not improved.

Pickles - A little girl with a little bit of "snarky energy" (she first appeared as a self-proclaimed Viking princess), Pickles immediately began tagging along with Opus and Bill. She has appeared much less frequently as of late.

Auggie Dallas - Steve's long lost son, reunited with his father after many years. He has nothing but admiration for Steve, even though Steve is sometimes reluctant to act like a father figure.

[edit] Other characters

Senator Bedfellow - Though previously convicted on corruption charges, Bedfellow has returned of late, still usually drunk and plagued by reporters.

Editor of the Bloom Picayune - Usually Opus' boss, the Picayune's editor is depicted as hyper-stressed and suicidal, though somewhat older than he was in Bloom County.

[edit] Absent characters

Early on in the strip, it was revealed that Michael Binkley had fled Bloom County to become a teenage Tibetan eunuch after a disastrous first kiss. He has not been heard from since.

Opus eventually ponders the whereabouts of his other buddies from the past. Among those that Opus remembers are Milo Bloom and Oliver Wendell Jones, although the whereabouts of both have not yet been discussed. Additionally, Ronald-Ann Smith, the original protagonist of Outland, has not been referenced at all in the strip.

At an autograph party for an Opus anthology book, Breathed revealed that the reason many of the original child characters had not returned is because in the years since the end of Outland, the child characters would have aged into teenagers, and Breathed has no interest in reviving the characters in that form. [1]

[edit] Artwork and Availability

In numerous interviews before launching Opus, Berke Breathed stated his hopes that the strip would help reinvigorate the medium of newspaper comics. He criticized many modern strips, especially Garfield, for lacking expressive artwork or original humor. (Ironically, Opus has seen Breathed re-use many plots and punchlines from his own 1980s strip, Bloom County.)

The original syndication contract for Opus stipulated that it occupy an entire half of a newspaper page. According to The Washington Post Writers Group, this was to provide "space for Breathed to offer richness and depth, similar to the breathtaking imagery in his popular children's books." [2] While this style can appear hand-painted or airbrushed, it is actually rendered by Breathed on a computer using Adobe Photoshop. The half-page requirement has since been lifted, and the strip is now scaled down by most newspapers. Its original illustration style has also been largely abandoned in favor of a more hand-drawn look, much like that of Breathed's previous strip, Outland.

In an effort to help boost physical newspaper sales, the strip was barred from appearing online, to the point where it was even printed in a special "unscannable" DRM ink by some papers. However, in 2005, that too changed and Opus became officially available on the web.

[edit] The Movie

Miramax Films was reported to have obtained the movie rights to the series, with plans for a CG animated film based on the comic. A minor change with Opus's character design for the film is even reflected in the comic (a line now separates Opus's eyes). However, with new management at the company, the project appears to be in limbo at the present time.