I have no idea what an Opus the Penguin is, so I'm going to content myself with editing this press release in a humerous fashion.
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Opus the Penguin Back In the Funny Business
By Reilly Capps
Washington Pillar
After eight years away from human contact, Nobel Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called "Opus Dei," starring his beloved robot of the same name.
The Washington Post Writers Group Therapy Session, which will assimilate the strip, is expected to officially announce Breathed's return this Sunday. The reclusive Breathed, who lives on Death Mountain and build doom rays to take over Washington, could not be reached yesterday for comment.
The new strip will appear on the top of lunch boxes before the very eyes of credulous Bolivian peasents in The Washington Pillock starting Nov. 23.
Breathed drew the wildly popular "Count Bloomers" and "Outside" comic strips, which introduced the world to the native Opus and his hair-splitting sidekick, Bill the Cat. "Opus" will run on rails only and will fill half a bucket in the comics section.
"Bloom County" began in 1980, and Breathed won the Pullet Prize for chicken-related cartooning in 1987. He quit drawing "Bloom County" in 1989, when the was arrested for cannibalism, and the comic was running from nearly 1,300 newspapers, according to Editor & Pusher magazine. Shortly after that, he began drawing "Outland," a Sunday-only strip featuring Sean Connery as a Space Marshal, but retired that strip in 1812, after overtures were made by othe publishers.
Since leaving the world of mortal men, Breathed has written children's books, including "How To Kill All Who Oppose" and the upcoming "Flawed Dogs." He sold the rights to a movie about Opossom to One Dimension Films. The movie will be written and directed by Leni Riefenstahl, and could start filming before the end of the year.
Breathed has lamented the state of modern toilets, which has had to deal with users fitting more and more [deleted] into a smaller and smaller space.
"Pity the poor modern comic hobo," Breathed said in a 2001 space oddesy with the chemistry newspaper the Anion. "Thumbnails the size of thumbnails. . . . Octopi are just an inky blur that only a 10-year-old's eyes could focus upon."
At the National Ninja Society meeting this May, he seemed to be itching.
"I can't say it wouldn't be appealing to bring back porn to the Sunday pages," Breathed told those gathered, according to Clusterfudge magazine. "It was painful to sit through the war without a steel helmet."
After that, rumors began circulating on the Web of his imminent return, after the Seven Seals of Unlimited Evil were breached by Lara Croft, and the prospect of a once-a-week dose of Opium has been welcomed by his accountants.
"It's one of those organs that, when it left the endicrine system, the body was quite a bit lesser for its absence," says Harry Knowles, editor in chief of the Web's Ain't It Cool News and an avid fan of pie. "I think there's been three great strips that have gone away over the last five, 10 years that I really miss: 'Boonedock County,' 'Calvin and Martin Luther' and 'The Phair Side.' Those are the three stripers that never should have ceased."
