Berkeley Breathed

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Berkeley Breathed
Born Guy Berkeley Breathed
June 21, 1957 (1957-06-21) (age 52)
Encino, Los Angeles, California
Nationality American
Area(s) cartoonist, illustrator, screenwriter
Notable works Bloom County comic strip
(1980–1989) and its sequels
Awards Pulitzer Prize – For editorial cartooning
1987

Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (born June 21, 1957) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director, and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip which dealt with socio-political issues as understood by fanciful characters (e.g. Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and humorous analogies.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Born in Encino, California[citation needed] and raised in Houston, Texas, Breathed (pronounced BREATH-ed) attended Westchester High School.[1]

[edit] Cartooning career

Breathed became published first when he was hired part-time by the Austin American-Statesman to draw editorial cartoons for the newspaper. This job was short-lived; he was dismissed shortly after one of his cartoons caused outrage.[2] His first comic strip published regularly was The Academia Waltz, which appeared in the Daily Texan, in 1978 while he was a student at the University of Texas. The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of the Washington Post, who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam war veteran Cutter John. In the beginning, the strip's style was so similar to that of another popular strip, Doonesbury, that Doonesbury's creator Garry Trudeau wrote to Breathed several times to indicate their similarities.[citation needed] Breathed has acknowledged[citation needed] that he borrowed liberally from Doonesbury during his early career. In the Outland collection, One Last Little Peek, Breathed even put an early Bloom County side-by-side with the Doonesbury comic strip from which it obviously took its idea.

Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning during 1987[3]. The strip eventually appeared in over 1,200 newspapers around the world until Berkeley retired the daily strip during 1989, stating that he wanted to terminate the strip while it was still popular. At that time, he said, "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon. The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age less gracefully than their creators".[4]

He replaced this strip with the surreal Sunday-only cartoon Outland in 1989, which reused some of the Bloom County characters, including Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat. He ended Outland in 1995.

Eight years later, Breathed began the comic strip Opus, a Sunday-only strip featuring Opus the Penguin, who was one of the main characters of Bloom County. He colored the cartoon himself with Adobe Photoshop, claiming that the advances in technology since 1990 have created an opportunity to draw "something that 'looks' cool on a comic page".[citation needed]

In June 2007, Salon.com announced[citation needed] it would carry new Opus cartoons by Berkeley as a weekly Sunday feature.

Several newspapers chose not to run the August 26, 2007 Opus cartoon because it might offend Muslims.[5]

On October 6, 2008, Breathed announced plans to discontinue all work on comic strips with the final Opus strip to run on November 2, 2008.[6] Breathed plans to focus on writing children's books.[1]

The last Opus comic strip appeared on schedule, but in what may be a comic first the final panel required an online link. At HumaneSociety.org/Opus, the penguin can be seen sleeping peacefully in the big bed from the children's book Goodnight Moon.

Breathed said that he had no regrets in leaving political cartooning, as he believes the atmosphere became too bitter for him to make quality cartoons.[7]

[edit] Other works

In addition to his syndicated cartoon work, which has produced eleven best-selling cartoon collections, he has also produced five children's books, two of which, A Wish for Wings That Work and Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big, were made into animated films. Since 1992, he has designed a greeting card and gift ensemble collection for American Greetings, featuring the "Bloom County" characters Opus, Bill the Cat, and Milquetoast the Cockroach. Breathed's writing has also been featured in numerous publications, including Life, Boating, and Travel and Leisure, and he produced the cartoon art of the film, Secondhand Lions, which featured a strip called Walter and Jasmine. The panels he drew for Secondhand Lions appear in Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, in which Breathed terms them "the comic strip that never was".

Breathed has been a supporter of the animal rights group PETA and illustrated the cover of their "Compassionate Cookbook," T-shirts, and other merchandise.

Breathed cameos as himself in the brief film "Tim Warner: A Life in the Clouds", a fictional tale about an unhappy cartoonist and his unfunny strip, The Silver Lining.[8]

Breathed adapted his children's book Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big into a brief film produced by Disney. Intended originally to be released as a bonus with a theatrically released Disney animated film, the movie as of April 2007 was not exhibited commercially in any format.[citation needed] His book, "Red Ranger Came Calling" was adapted into a musical and produced as a Christmas show by Seattle's Book-It Theatre in 2004-2005.[citation needed]

During May 2009, filming was finished of the motion-capture Disney flim "Mars Needs Moms!" based on Breathed's picture book of the same name. Due for release during 2010, it stars Joan Cusack and Seth Green and is directed by Simon Wells and produced by Robert Zemeckis.

[edit] Personal life

Breathed is a fan of outdoor activities such as powerboating and motorcycling. During 1986, he broke his back in an ultralight-plane crash, later incorporated into a "Bloom County" storyline in which Steve Dallas breaks his back after being attacked by an angry Sean Penn. Breathed also nearly lost his right arm to a boat propeller the same year.[4]

Breathed, his wife and two children live in Santa Barbara, in southern California. He is reportedly a very private person, and although he has given interviews to online magazines such as The Onion and Salon, he rarely gives face-to-face or telephone interviews and resists talking about himself. He and his wife support animal rights, and his book, Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound, promotes animal adoption. Breathed befriended humorous fantasy author Douglas Adams when Adams moved to Santa Barbara during 1999. Adams was also very keen on wildlife preservation.

During the middle of September 1990, while visiting a factory in England, Mr. Breathed noticed he received odd, humorous looks from the workers upon hearing his name. After inquiring about the reason for their strange looks, he learned that his nickname, "Berke," is homonymous with "Berk", a vulgar term for a vagina in Cockney rhyming slang ("Berkeley Hunt").[9]

Breathed once stated he is an atheist[10] as well as a vegetarian.[citation needed]

On May 18, 2008, in his comic strip Opus, he announced he was suffering from a condition known as spasmodic torticollis.[11]

[edit] Books

Cartoon Compilations
Children's Books
  • A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story, 1991
  • The Last Basselope: One Ferocious Story, 1992
  • Goodnight Opus, 1993
  • Red Ranger Came Calling, 1994
  • Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big, Little, Brown and Company, 2000
  • Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound, 2003
    • Breathed said that Flawed Dogs's intended audience is different from the intended audiences of his other picture books. He said that Flawed Dogs would be "perfect" for 8-12 year olds, but that he would not read the book to his (in 2009) 5 year old son.[7]
  • Mars Needs Moms!, 2007
  • Pete & Pickles, 2008

[edit] Awards

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Berkowitz, Lana, "His latest opus: Bloom County creator finds a more constructive path writing children's books", Houston Chronicle, April 4, 2007
  2. ^ Breathed, Berke (1990). Classics of Western Literature. Little Brown. p. 2. ISBN 0-316-10764-9. 
  3. ^ Pulitzer Prize Awards List 1987
  4. ^ a b The Official Berkeley Breathed Website
  5. ^ Donaldson-Evans, Catherine, "Washington Post, Other Newspapers Won't Run 'Opus' Cartoon Mocking Radical Islam", Fox News, August 28, 2007
  6. ^ Stern, Sherry, "Berkeley Breathed says goodbye to Opus: 'I'm destroying the village to save it'", Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2008
  7. ^ a b "Vick dog inspired 'Bloom County,' 'Opus' creator." CNN. October 13, 2009. Retrieved on October 13, 2009.
  8. ^ Ifilm.com
  9. ^ "Berkeley Breathed: "Mars Needs Moms" (Philomel)". The Diane Rehm Show. 2007-05-08.
  10. ^ Whitney, William, "Berkeley Breathed Pokes Fun", Psychology Today, January/February 2004
  11. ^ Breathed, Berkeley, Opus: "Anyone got a remedy for pain?" Salon.com, May 18, 2008

[edit] References

  • Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Jules Feiffer		 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
1987		 Succeeded by
Doug Marlette
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