Berkeley Breathed Getting Out of the Comics Biz ... for Real, this Time.

Berke Breathed's Opus Sunday comic is coming to an end next month. I would mourn, but I really haven't read his stuff since Bloom County folded. Bloom County, of course, is one of my top influences. Hmm... what are my top influences? In no particular order:

• Bloom County
• Calvin & Hobbes
• Star Wars
• Peanuts
  
• The Simpsons
• The Far Side

Boy, I read a lot of comics as a kid. And watched cartoons. Yup. Child of the Seventies/Eighties. (I did read a lot of non-illustrated books, too, but they have much less of an effect on my daily job.)

Back to Berkeley Breathed, though. Be sure to check out the podcast interviews that Bat Segundo did with Berkeley Breathed last year. (Part One, Part Two) B.B. talks a great deal about how the newspaper comics page is now the most sanitized piece of media in existence (hint—Bloom County could not be printed today. Period.) and how the age of collective social experiences (say, everyone knowing who the Beatles and Elvis are; everyone watching the same TV show; etc.) is over.