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Required Reading For That Walter Mitty In Us All.
Whether animal, vegetable or mineral, what falls upon this page has in part or by in large given File Under Fire life.
I can't take all the credit, though I know some of the people here would wish I did. Bare with me. This page will grow.
Berkeley Breathed
website: Berkeley Breathed Online
Bat Segundo author interview: Part One, Part Two
Before the need to create a comic came about, the appreciation for them peaked with my fandom of Bloom County, what
some thought of, at the time, as a poor knockoff of Gary Trudeau's less funny and rapidly anti-apropos comic strip
Doonesbury. Honestly, the best thing he coud've done at the time was take an hiatus. And he did. Trudeau has come back with
more strength, maturity and Starbuck's product tie-ins than anyone could've ever hoped.
Bill Watterson was right to not overmerchandise.
In fact, Calvin And Hobbes author Watterson was vehemently against what he saw as the downfall and
undermining of the value of comics. Intrensic was what this dude was after, for himself and his fellow artists.
Back to Gary Trudeau and Berkeley Breathed.
While both have had their share of product lines over the years, it has been Breathed who ultimately won my highest regard, in
his foray into children's books and of course coming back to the mantle of the funny papers with Opus. This isn't a
Trudeau diss. I dig on Gary. But where Gary is working to be relevent, Berkeley is simply struggling to be.
I like that.
A lot of people don't get Bloom County, Opus and Berkeley's other work. I think mainly because it doesn't
just require a suspension of disbelief, it doesn't just require an adult frame of reference while seeing the world (in part)
through that child-like part of our heart, but his work asks to do that AND deal with the ridiculousness of the times
we live in. Man, Berkeley wouldn't hold back in his savage caricatures of personalities of the 80's. Events and trends,
he'd always make me step back and laugh. Moreso, years later when I got a more rounded picture of what he was talking about,
but still there it was.
Some I've talked to seem to suggest older Bloom County work is the ink equivalent of sticking out your tongue at culture
and calling it a day. I think it all goes a lot deeper... well, as deep as you can go on the kinds of deadlines Berkeley was
surviving through at the time. I believe some of the most long-laasting, fundamental and valuable things are learned in the
midst of things that are less than "adult" in quality -- call them childish kiddie fodder if you like.
I like this quote, and it applies to every bit of the noble cartoon illustration profession, and especially Berkeley
Breathed:
"To fear the appearance of immaturity is a childish trait."
-- C.S. Lewis
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