Tuesday, October 13, 2015

'Bloom County' And Opus The Penguin Return After A 25-Year Hiatus

Fresh Air interviewed Berkeley Breathed, 'Bloom County' And Opus The Penguin Return After A 25-Year Hiatus. Here's just one interesting tidbit:

BERKELEY BREATHED: I watched slack-jawed in horror as they threw one of the 20th century's most iconic fictional heroes, Atticus Finch, under the bus. At the time - and this was a couple of months ago - it made me think that there would have been no 'Bloom County' without 'Mockingbird' because I was 12 I read it, and the book's fictional Southern small town of Maycomb had settled deep into my graphic imagination and informed it forever. If you look at any of my art for the past 30 years, there's always a small-town flavor to it.

So this summer, just a couple months ago when 'Go Set A Watchman' was causing an uproar, I went back to my files and I pulled an old fan letter from years ago. It says (reading) dear Mr. Breathed, this is a plea from a dotty old lady and from others not dotty at all. Please don't shut down Opus. Can't you at least give him a reprieve? Opus is simply the best comic strip there is and depriving him of life is murder - a hard word to describe an obliteration of your creation. But Opus is real. He lives. Harper Lee, Monroeville, Ala.

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