Cutter John

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Cutter John is a fictional character in the 1980s comic strip Bloom County by Berke Breathed.

Cutter was a wheelchair-bound Vietnam War veteran and one of the county's most well-liked citizens. Despite being somewhat childish and awkward at times, was very popular with the ladies, particularly schoolteacher Bobbi Harlow. Cutter also was a good friend to many of the animal characters of Bloom County, often role-playing Star Trek with them (using his wheelchair as the "Enterpoop").

In one story arc, he and Opus the Penguin were lost at sea (after Oliver Wendell Jones had converted Cutter's wheelchair into a hot-air balloon) while attempting to cause havoc at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. Having blown off course and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, Cutter was captured by a Soviet submarine and held as a spy. Opus developed amnesia during the incident and found his way back to the Bloom Boardinghouse, and told everyone what had happened once his memory returned. Eventually Cutter was traded for Bill the Cat, who had apparently been moonlighting as a spy. He appeared much less often after that.

Cutter John is one of Breathed's oldest characters, first appearing in The Academia Waltz. (In those days his name was given as "Saigon John".) His more familiar name is most likely a reference to the "Trapper John McIntyre" from M*A*S*H. While a major character in the first half of Bloom County 's nine-year run, his role was reduced to only occasional cameos for the remainder of that strip and its immediate spin-off, Outland. In the commentary in one of the Bloom County collections, Breathed observed that he dropped Cutter John from the strip because it was too artistically challenging and "frustrating" to draw someone sitting down in every panel of the comic. According to Breathed, a wheelchair-bound fan of the strip, upon hearing this observation, said Breathed "ought to try sitting in a wheelchair [himself] for real frustration".

He has yet to appear in Breathed's latest endeavor, Opus, though it is also set in Bloom County.