Berkeley Breathed

I've read and loved this book for as long as I can remember. It's probably one of the finest Christmas stories ever written, with the whole unlikely hero angle being worked to a frenzy. It's not something I can say I expect when I read Mr. Breathed's work, though I'm coming to realize that maybe I should. Of the books that I've read by him lately, each one has cleverly fused a story with some moral theme. A lot of his work seems to be focused on the loneliness of modern life, and his show more characters usually are on a quest to overcome that. This one is no different. Opus longs for acceptance among his bird peers and believes that proper wings will provide him with that. Of course, he eventually begins to see the value he has as a penguin and in fact does get his wish to fly with the birds in his own way, but the fact that this is a moral tale kind of hides behind the irony and humor most of the time. Wonderful book. Brilliantly funny and heartfelt all the way through. show less

It's Bloom County: you either get the humour or you don't. I've been a huge fan of Breathed's work since the 80's and when he quit if felt like a friend died. His come-back has been a driving force behind my putting up with Facebook's daily crap and most days the only reason I open FB at all.

Episode XI: A New Hope is a collection of the new FB only strips and they are wonderful. I rarely never laugh out loud the way I do when one of Breathed's strips hits me just right. I howled at a few of show more these and conversely, there were a couple of strips that teared me up.

Breathed is a genius at holding up a mirror for all of us and allows me to laugh at the stuff that normally makes me want to hide under my bed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for bring Opus and the gang back. show less

What a marvelous morality tale. The lesson is one that grownups also ought to hear. I love that an author who can write masterful adult literature as Lincoln in the Bardo, can also tell a children's story, in children's prose, that delivers the same level of insight into human nature. This book also makes a great graduation gift.

I faithfully read Berkeley Breathed's strip Bloom County, and the follow-up strips Outland and Opus, every day while it was running. I loved these characters and still do to this day. Breathed's commentary on the events of the day was always a little on the snarky side, but it was always done intelligently. It is clear in these early strips that Breathed is trying to find his voice. There are some characters that you can tell just don't mesh as well with the evolving feel of the strip, and show more eventually these characters just melt out of existence. It is also fun to see how the characters that did manage to make the cut evolved from their early beginnings. Towards the end of this first volume, which ends in mid 1982, Breathed has clearly found the voice of the strip and his characters and is beginning to hone the comic wit and satire that will eventually make this strip great.

When I heard that they were finally publishing a complete collection of the strips, I was ecstatic. The volume itself is very nicely presented, and the strips look great reprinted. All in all, I believe that there will be five volumes produced altogether, and I'm hoping that these will include the subsequent strips Outland and Opus, as some of these strips have never been reprinted before. show less