Jimmy Marguiles on Berke Breathed

Breathed's game: The Bloom County strips of November 6 and 7, 1987 were the scene of round two in the Oliphant-Breathed feud. Breathed retaliated for Oliphant's criticism of the Bloom County Pulitzer by portraying Oliphant's trademark, Punk the Penguin, as a foul-mouthed, cockney-accented replacement for Opus (in reference to a TV actors' walkout) who was jealous of Opus's success in stuffed animals and assorted merchandising. Bringing this essentially personal feud into his comic strip only confirms Oliphant's characterization of Bloom County as sophomoric. If Breathed felt his Pulitzer was truly valid and justified he wouldn't have to answer to Oliphant in any shape or form. What is really rankling is Breathed's abuse of his space to settle the score with Oliphant. It's safe to say only a few hundred people in the country, 99% of them cartoonists, picked up on the poke at Oliphant. That arrogantly excludes the vast majority of readers. Bloom County's success and widespread syndication are secure enough to leave readers scratching their heads for two days, but such intentional obscurity is nonetheless inexcusable. And, again because of Breathed's secure position, he was able to get by with behavior which was deemed inexcusable in others. Several years ago, two editorial cartoonists included a personal message in their drawings and both lost their jobs. One, a cartoonist in New Jersey, wrote "I Love Lori" on a plaster cast. The other, Rob Lamlor, of the Philadelphia Daily News, put his estranged wife's phone number under the lines of a Universal Price Code which was the motif of the cartoon. While the media ignored the personal feud in Bloom County, since it was too esoteric for non-cartoonist journalists, it did react to the dialogue in the last panel of the first two strips. Breathed had "Ollie Funt" the Penguin say "Reagan Sucks." A number of papers either pulled the strip for that day, cancelled Bloom County outright, or ran the strip and published an apology. While the earthy remark received all the attention, the real outrage of Breathed's abuse of his comic strip slipped by.