Berkeley Breathed

Comic Strips. What is wrong with them? Well, I have been spouting off about how bad they are and forgot to mention another of the bright spots. Opus on Sunday’s is a pretty darn good strip. Funny, entertaining, and seems to get better each week. While not a huge fan of his ‘airbrushed’ kids book look, I enjoy his books. Flawed Dogs was really great, and at its heart is a real issue - pets with no loving homes waiting in shelters to be euthanized. I hear his latest book - Mars Needs Moms has been optioned by Disney and is in some state of development in feature animation. Not sure that makes me happy. I’m old fashioned, I love creative material that lives in the format where it was developed, but from reading his website it seems he wants to direct, so maybe this is an opportuniy to get him into the role of directing feature animation. But as a somtimes cartoonist who spent a bit of time in various horrible studio jobs in LA, I wonder why you would want to give up the freedom that comes with writing and drawing your own strip/book/comic for the 5 plus years of meetings and notes that go into a feature film? It’s like a Governor becoming a U.S. Senator. Better to be king of Wisconsin then listen to the Senior Senator from Utah tell you why you don’t get to speak at such-an-such a committee meeting until you’ve been in the seante for 20 years.