Michael Binkley

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Michael Binkley was a major character in Berke Breathed's cartoon strip Bloom County.

Michael, known to all simply as 'Binkley,' was a 10-year-old boy who lived at the Bloom County Boarding House with his father Tom (his mother, Margret, had divorced Tom and moved to Oakland with a Hells Angel). Binkley was in the same class as Milo Bloom, his best friend. Binkley introduced Opus to his group, believing he was a dog. Binkley is described as an airhead by everyone who knows him (except Opus). Binkley is the first recurring child character after Milo to appear in the strip and largely replaced the dog Rabies as Milo's sounding board.

Binkley originally appears as a player on Milo's elementary school football team. The coach is Major Bloom who uses the team to live out his fantasy of being a great military commander. Binkley originally was a stereotypical nerd. He was much smaller than the other children and has thick glasses, bad skin, and messy hair. Soon afterwards, Binkley appears in his "classic" look. (Opus once commented that Binkley looked like a carrot.) Binkley's father initially calls him "Mad Dog" and hopes he will live out his fathers failed dreams by becoming a star middle linebacker. Binkley, on the other hand, is interested in ballet, wants to dance the lead in Swan Lake, and dreams of being a hairdresser.

He constantly wakes up his father in the middle of the night to talk to him about celebrity gossip and other inane things. He also has a closet in his room where his anxieties dwell and plague him at night. Their leader is the Giant Purple Snorklewhacker, but the anxieties can range from typical things like giant snakes to politically-themed ones like a pair of disagreeing macroeconomists. Binkley was interested in an African American girl named Blondie (scandalizing the rather conservative townsfolk, including his father). Binkley campaigned with the Meadow Party, although he and his father are solid Democrats.

In the Sunday strip Opus, it was revealed that Binkley had become a eunuch in Tibet after a disastrous first date. However, Binkley made a sudden and unexplained reappearance in the June 3, 2007 Opus strip. ^[1]No mention was made of either his castrated state or his monastic lifestyle, and he appeared as he did when last seen in the classic strips.