Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author, director, and screenwriter, known for his comic strips Bloom County, Outland, and Opus.
21 Facts About Berkeley Breathed
2.
Berkeley Breathed was first published when he was hired part-time by the Austin American-Statesman to draw editorial cartoons for the newspaper.
3.
Berkeley Breathed's first comic strip published regularly was The Academia Waltz, which appeared in the Daily Texan, in 1978 while he was a student at the University of Texas.
4.
Berkeley Breathed has acknowledged that he borrowed liberally from Doonesbury during his early career.
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The strip eventually appeared in over 1,200 newspapers around the world until Berkeley Breathed retired the daily strip in 1989, stating that he wanted to terminate the strip while it was still popular.
6.
Berkeley Breathed replaced the strip with the surreal Sunday-only cartoon Outland in 1989, which reused some of the Bloom County characters, including Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat.
7.
In 2003, Berkeley Breathed began the comic strip Opus, a Sunday-only strip featuring Opus the Penguin, who was one of the main characters of Bloom County.
8.
On October 6,2008, Berkeley Breathed announced plans to discontinue all work on comic strips with the final Opus strip to run on November 2,2008.
9.
Berkeley Breathed explained that he felt that the United States was going to face "tough times", and that he wanted to end the saga of his most memorable character "on a lighter note".
10.
Berkeley Breathed said that he had no regrets in leaving political cartooning, as he believed the atmosphere became too bitter for him to make quality cartoons.
11.
In July 2015 Berkeley Breathed hinted at a return to the strip when he posted a photo to Facebook of him at his computer, starting a cartoon entitled "Bloom County 2015".
12.
Berkeley Breathed has subsequently been posting new Bloom County strips via Facebook on an almost-daily basis, as of January 2018.
13.
In 2021, Berkeley Breathed penned a series of strips featuring characters from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.
14.
Berkeley Breathed's syndicated and Facebook cartoon work has produced at least thirteen cartoon anthology books, as of January 2018.
15.
Berkeley Breathed's writing has been featured in numerous publications, including Life, Boating, and Travel and Leisure.
16.
Berkeley Breathed produced the cartoon art for the closing credits of the Texas-based 2003 film Secondhand Lions, which featured a strip called Walter and Jasmine.
17.
The panels that Berkeley Breathed drew for Secondhand Lions appear in his cartoon anthology book Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, in which Berkeley Breathed terms them "the comic strip that never was".
18.
Berkeley Breathed is a fan of outdoor activities such as powerboating and motorcycling.
19.
Berkeley Breathed nearly lost his right arm to a boating accident.
20.
Berkeley Breathed has said that he is an atheist, yet he doesn't fear death more than "sharing a room in a detox center with a sobbing Rush Limbaugh".
21.
On May 18,2008, in his comic strip Opus, Berkeley Breathed announced he was suffering from a condition known as spasmodic torticollis.