MemeMachineGo!

Berke Breathed predicted Dilbert :

O: In the October 1988 issue of The Comics Journal, you went into detail about what you thought newspaper comic-strip syndicates were really looking for: a situational strip drawn by a disaffected office worker who saw funny things going on around him, and who had no artistic experience and could only draw a little, which wouldn’t matter, because of the shrinking size of the comics pages. A year later, Dilbert made its debut. Coincidence? Do you have a future ahead of you as the new Edgar Cayce?

BB: You’re kind. Art via marketing ain’t exactly rocket science. This is how they green-light movies now. This is how they greenlight everything. I could never get Bloom County started today, because it wouldn’t make any sense as a marketing platform. And there you have the State Of The World. When they can figure out how to make a profitable marketing franchise out of the long-awaited “National Discussion On Race,” we’ll finally have one. We’ll put Bill Clinton sitting there dressed and grinning like Regis, with a circle of people around him screaming at each other, and the one who sounds the most victimized goes home with the million bucks. That’s the only way you could ever keep people from throttling each other long enough to have a second show. Which, as we all know, means a franchise! What’s Edgar Cayce got to do with this again?

You’ve probably heard Opus is back . Find the papers carrying the new strip. The Austin Statesman has some history of Breathed and here’s an interview with Opus .

I loved the Bloom County of the early to mid eighties. But I thought it became unfunny several years before he quit… he was just picking a topic and screaming about it for a week. I didn’t bother following Outland.

Breathed, in the Salon interview above, actually more or less agrees with my assessment of late Bloom County. I now think I gave Outland short shrift and I’ll be looking for used copies of the books.

It won’t be available on-line (at least not legitimately.) The local fishwrap (as D’Monquis has it) is carrying Opus. But rather than slaying some of the funnies page dinosaurs to make room for the full half page Breathed’s contract demands, they put it in their Sunday Datebook section.

Which they’ve just resumed printing in pink .

Yes, that’s right. A full color comic strip on pink newspaper. Friggin’ brilliant.

I wish this had occurred to Breathed when he was making his contractual demands… somehow I doubt this is what he had in mind. As a subscriber, it sure as hell isn’t what I had in mind.