Berkeley Breathed - The penguin is mightier than the sword

After being surprised to see him and his cartoons in the terrific family movie Second Hand Lions - I see Bloom County will return to newspapers. Sunday only, half-page.

The Salon interview.

> Last we heard from you, via the Onion interview a few years back,
> the odds of you ever doing a strip again seemed pretty slim
> (to put it mildly). What changed?

The world went and got silly again. I left in 1995 with things properly, safely dull, and couldn't imagine why anyone would feel it necessary again to start behaving ridiculously. It would have been at least courteous of the Republicans to warn a few of us inclined to retire our ink-swords that they had King George waiting in his zoom-zoom jetsuit aching to start the Crusades again.

> What are the advantages of a Sunday-only strip?

In my case, having a life. Ever see a seven-day-a-week cartoonist?

This is from his interview in The Onion from 2001.

O: Is the liberal stance of the early strips indicative of your own personal politics?

BB: Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.