{"id":1816,"date":"2009-10-06T14:22:13","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T14:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2009-10-06T14:22:13","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T14:22:13","slug":"berkeley_breathed_interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2009\/10\/06\/berkeley_breathed_interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare Berkeley Breathed Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first encountered Bloom County<\/i>, the renowned daily newspaper cartoon strip by Berke Breathed, in middle school. It caught my eye one day because — can you guess? — Breathed was doing a Star Wars<\/i> parody in which one of his regular characters dreams that he is Luke Skywalker, with the rest of the Star Wars<\/i> cast “played” by other inhabitants of the strip. (Opus the Penguin<\/a> is featured as Artoo in a memorable sight gag<\/a>.) As I recall, this was around the time of Return of the Jedi<\/i>‘s release in 1983; I liked the cartoons so much that I cut them out of the paper and kept them in the back corner of my desk drawer for years. Unfortunately, I threw them out during a moment of extreme dumbassery following the purchase of a Bloom County<\/i> collection that included the storyline. Naturally, I later realized I’d rather have those yellow scraps of newsprint for my collection of vintage memorabilia than another damn book. C’est la vie, I suppose.<\/p>\n

In any event, I was hooked by that storyline, and I continued to read Bloom County<\/i> until the end of its run in 1989. I thought it was funny more often than not, frequently LOL-funny, as we now say, and I liked the gentle absurdity that permeated the strip. Also, the frequent references to Star Wars<\/i>, Star Trek<\/i>, Michael Jackson, and other pop-cultural touchstones appealed to my fanboy sensibilities. And, for someone whose experience with comic strips to that point had been limited to the vacuum-sealed worlds of Peanuts<\/i>, Garfield<\/i>, and Beetle Bailey<\/i>, a strip that referenced and commented upon current events was utterly fascinating. I know Breathed’s forays into political subjects, as well as a generally liberal perspective on things, led to criticism that Bloom County<\/i> was merely a knock-off of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury<\/i> with talking animals, but honestly, I think the similarity was a good thing. At least for me. Because I doubt I ever would’ve come to appreciate Doonesbury<\/i> if the more adolescent-friendly Bloom County<\/i> hadn’t prepared me first, and I do treasure Doonesbury<\/i> now. In a very real sense, I owe one of my current daily pleasures to what Berke Breathed and his silly penguin were doing 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, Bloom County<\/i> wrapped in 1989, and while he hasn’t been nearly as Salingeresque as, say, Gary Larson<\/a> or Bill Watterson<\/a> — he has created two “sequel” strips and written a number of children’s books over the past two decades — Breathed has kept a pretty low profile since then. Thus, the surprisingly candid interview<\/a> I ran across yesterday was a revelation. It turns out Berkeley Breathed is a man with regrets, who’s willing to acknowledge that he was something of an ass in his younger days, and who doesn’t think much of his own talents or creations. I found him to be much more likable than I expected to. If you ever had a stuffed Opus doll — and my Loyal Readers aren’t wrong in assuming I still have mine! — go give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a related note, the first volume of a new series of hardcover books<\/a> collecting every Bloom County<\/i> daily and Sunday strip (many never before reprinted, as the publicists say) is now available. It looks like a desirable addition to the library, and it’s even reasonably priced. If anyone would like to get me a late birthday present (or an early Christmas gift), there’s an idea for you.<\/p>\n

Postscript: In looking up those Star Wars<\/i> parody strips I linked to above, I was startled by the prescience of this one<\/a>… how weird that Breathed came within a year of getting it right! And that he anticipated how the fanboys would one day turn on the Great Flanneled One!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first encountered Bloom County, the renowned daily newspaper cartoon strip by Berke Breathed, in middle school. It caught my eye one day because — can you guess? — Breathed was doing a Star Wars parody in which one of his regular characters dreams that he is Luke Skywalker, with the rest of the Star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}