OPUS by Berkeley Breathed: The complete Sunday strips from 2003-2008

B E R K E L E Y B R E AT H E D ’ S

OPUS THE COMPLETE LIBRARY

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SUNDAY COMICS 2003–2008 IDW PUBLISHING SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

THE

BERKELEY BREATHED LIBRARY ! "#

BERKELEY BREATHED’S OPUS SUNDAY COMICS 2003–2008

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THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS EDITED BY Scott Dunbier DESIGNED BY Dean Mullaney, CREATIVE DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce Canwell ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith www.libraryofamericancomics.com Special Thanks Ted Adams, Jody Boyman, Berkeley Breathed, Amanda Dunbier, Greg Goldstein, Amy Lago, Rick Norwood, David Ohman, Scott Tipton, and Jeff Webber.

ISBN $IGITAL First Printing, November 2012 IDW Publishing a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street • San Diego, CA 92109 www.idwpublishing.com IDW Publishing Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher • Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist • Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer • Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing • Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100

For more on Berkeley Breathed and all his creations, please visit www.berkeleybreathed.com or find him on Facebook to stay current with new announcements, developments, musings and products.

Opus ® and © 2012 Berkeley Breathed. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark of The Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Berkeley Breathed. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Berkeley Breathed. Printed in Korea.

INTRODUCTION

by Berkeley Breathed It was early in the new millennium and only midway through my ostensibly permanent post-Outland cartooning sabbatical when I was surprised to find myself giving a speech at the National Cartoonist Society’s annual drunken hoedown, that year taking place in San Francisco.

This was significant for two reasons.

First, that evening, I received my third Reuben Award for Best Humorous Comic Strip. Wait, that’s a lie.

They’ve never awarded me anything. You only win Reuben’s from the NCS if you’ve dispensed sexual favors to their board of directors and I demurred each year for the same reason as does everyone, including spouses and cheap hookers: They’re cartoonists.

Garry Trudeau and Jim Davis won a bunch of Reubens. Just sayin’.

The other reason that evening was memorable was because the theme of my breathtakingly unappreciated speech was, “Know When It’s Time to Quit.”

This was akin to addressing an auditorium full of 13-year-old girls with a lecture on grammar titled “‘Like’ Isn’t a Fucking Conjunction.” As I spoke, Cathy Guisewite of Cathy fame stared up at me with a toxic hate ray that never really let up over the years. Her look said, “We don’t stop. Nobody EVER stops in this business. I wish we’d have given you a Reuben so we could yank it back, dickhead.”

Still, I was sincere in my point: the universe lives on an arc. Movies do. Lives do. Books. Sports careers.

Marriages. A case of hives. A good plot. A beginning, a middle, and an end.

End. Only comic strips had trouble with that last part. I say this in the past tense for the sad reason that industries also live in arcs. Buggy whips. Radio. Typewriters. CDs. Alas, and newspapers.

Ignoring the truth that an organic creative arc exists even for a comic strip remained to me an exercise that wobbled somewhere between selfishness and arrogance. That weekend in San Francisco I wobbled myself to make that point. In doing so, I used what I considered the most heartbreaking example: Peanuts.

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Sparky Schulz invented the modern comic strip, of course. He changed American culture in a way few writers ever have, his gags and terms becoming part of the collective American word balloon.

Snoopy T-shirts were seen across the backs of even the most remote jungle headhunting tribe in Borneo.

But Schulz didn’t retire the strip until his shaking hands fired him from his own world. He’d finally succumbed long after Peanuts had lapsed into the fate of all arcs: the sad descent. This, I believed, was a blow to Sparky’s dignity and it broke my fanboy heart.

And a fan I was, maybe to your surprise. My readers mostly assumed that it was Trudeau that I wanted to be when I started.

Actually, in my writer’s heart of hearts…it was Schulz. I fell into the old Peanuts collections with an odd, nostalgic yearning for an illusory simpler time the same way that I savored my favorite novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m thought of as a cynic.

Only a few know the terrible truth: I’m a squishy romantic.

[Editor’s note: I knew that.] The brilliant, knowing innocence of Charlie Brown’s world was more comfortable to me than any idiotic presidential campaign.

And I wanted that world to remain in my memory the way I had enjoyed it at the height of Schulz’s powers. By 2000 those powers had, of course, diminished.

To the NCS audience, I asked out loud how wonderful and brave it would have been for Sparky to have stepped off the dance

floor when his feet were still nimble and dazzling.

Little did I know that someone besides poorly coiffed and undersexed cartoonists were in the audience that night.

To my horror, Jeannie Schulz approached me and put a hand on my arm. She squeezed gently, introduced herself and said, “You need to understand, Berkeley. Sparky kept drawing the strip because he couldn’t have lived without it.”

Indeed. Schulz drew his last Peanuts less than a week before the end of the century. A few days later, he died.

He hadn’t been drawing for us. He’d drawn for himself.

He’d bloody well drawn just to live.

In Sparky’s case, to hell with arcs—passion doesn’t know a descending trajectory.

That night, I made the decision to return to the dying newspaper comic page for a very specific five years with Opus.

Not because the old readers were clamoring for it. Nor because it was a shrewd career move.

I simply thought it would be fun one more time to think of funny stuff and make myself laugh on occasion. Good enough for Sparky.

– Berkeley Breathed

Not your father’s Bloom County. Digital and weekly. Arguably, not a comic strip in any conventional sense. Without a daily conversation, a comic strip becomes an occasional glimpse into your character’s life, not a regular intervention. This is something less than the whole. But better than a vacuum, I would argue. Opus would have five colorful years more to live.—BB

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November 23, 2003

November 30, 2003

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8

December 7, 2003

December 14, 2003

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December 21, 2003

December 28, 2003

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January 4, 2004

January 11, 2004

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