The Return of Opus

[SteveDallas]

A lot of you probbaly know this already, but I haven't seen it here. And it is fitting, I suppose, that with my nickname I should make this posting. Berke Breathed will return to the comics pages once more!

http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/opus_returns.html

Mark Morford of SF Gate said it well:

The comics page is a place of reprieve, exhalation, absolution. It is a place of pause, release, maybe even the rare and precious open-mouthed, coffee‹thru-the-nose laughter. It is a tension diffuser and stress reliever and a blessed distraction from the never-ending assault on the spirit wrought by the soul-curdling headlines on A1. You want to get a real sense of the state of the union? Sample the mindset of the general readership? Read the comics page. Just don't read the "Family Circus" -- ever.

And when the comics page suffers, so suffers the readership. It is a never-ending baffler as to why major papers don't double their comics sections, offer unbounded and more pointed humor and insight and art and take more risks in this area. Have they not witnessed the insane popularity of anime and adult cartoons and comic book conventions? God knows the talent is out there, and it ain't anything like the numbing gags of "Hagar the Horrible."

But Opus is the Man. Or rather, he is the Penguin. He shall be the start. He shall herald a new day for the comics page. Let us believe it, even for a moment.