Breathed Returning to Newspapers

By: Dave Astor "Bloom County" creator Berkeley Breathed is returning to newspapers Nov. 23 with "Opus," a weekly comic starring his famous cartoon penguin.

Breathed had hinted he might do a Sunday-only comic again during a speech at the National Cartoonists Society meeting this spring (Syndicate World, June 5).

"Opus" will be in a half-page format at a time when many newspapers run five strips on a Sunday page. But Washington Post Writers Group Editorial Director/General Manager Alan Shearer told E&P Online that most of the 30 or so newspapers WPWG has already approached plan to buy Breathed's comic. "If you ran it before, you're going to want it again," said Shearer.

"Bloom County," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, appeared in nearly 1,300 newspapers via WPWG before ending in 1989. Its successor strip, the Sunday-only "Outland," ran in about 225 papers before ending in 1995.

Ideally, papers would expand their comics sections to make room for the large-format "Opus." But when Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" went half page more than a decade ago, a number of newsprint-cost-conscious papers responded by shrinking or dropping some other comics.

Shearer said Breathed has made great artistic use of the half page. "It's absolutely breathtaking," he said.

Newspaper editors are being shown "Opus," but are not alllowed to keep copies of it. "We're trying to keep it off the Internet," explained Shearer. "The one place and the only place to see 'Opus' will be in newspapers. This is a tremendous opportunity to increase circulation."

Shearer said "Opus" will be topical and -- unsurprisingly given the comic's name -- spotlight the penguin even more than "Bloom County" and "Outland" did. The WPWG executive wouldn't say whether or not other "Bloom County" characters besides Opus would appear.

The story about Breathed's Nov. 23 return to newspapers was broken in Tuesday's Washington Post.

Breathed is currently working on a film featuring Opus, and has done a number of children's books since ending "Bloom County."