Sunday, November 02, 2008

Rest in peace, my beautiful penguin

Well, it has finally happened ... Berkeley Breathed, creator of the magnificent Bloom County cartoon, has laid to rest Opus the Penguin.

After three incarnations, in Bloom Country, Outland and finall the eponymous Opus, my favourite penguin is going gently into that good night. Breathed has said that he wants to spare his most famous and well-loved creation from the current toxic political climate: "I'm destroying the village to save it. In this case, a penguin," Breathed wrote. "We are about to enter a rather wicked period in our National Discourse ... bad enough to make what we're in right now seem folksy and genteel. The ranting side of my cartooning impulse will destroy the thing that makes Opus comfortable for his readers. And me."

I only learned of Opus' impending demise a few weeks ago when my friend Jen blogged about it ... having been interned as an illegal alien by Homeland Security and then transferred to an animal shelter, Opus has retold the highlights of his life over the past few weeks (with some Sarah Palin episodes we oddly never knew about prior to now); and yesterday, Steve Dallas had the honour of discovering Opus' paradise.

It made me weepy. Goodbye Opus ... we hardly knew ye ...


No comments: