| Berkeley Breathed |
Index for Berkeley |
Limousines in Berkeley |
Website Links For Berkeley |
Information AboutBerkeley Breathed |
|
Early life Breathed was born on June 21 , 1957 , in Encino , California . He went to Westchester High School (now Westchester Academy For International Studies ) in Houston , Texas , where, according to an '' Austin American-Statesman '' article, he was a cheerleader who went by the name of Guy. It was here that Breathed began drawing cartoons and he occasionally submitted them to a local newspaper. He went on to the University Of Texas At Austin and became a photographer and writer for the campus newspaper '' The Daily Texan ''. Cartooning career His first regularly published strip was ''Academia Waltz'' which appeared in the ''Daily Texan'' in 1978. The strip attracted the editors of the Washington Post who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8 , 1980 , ''Bloom County'' made its debut, and featured some of the characters from ''Academia Waltz'' including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paralyzed Vietnam War veteran Cutter John . In the beginning, the strip's style was so close to that of another popular strip, '' Doonesbury '', that creator Garry Trudeau wrote Breathed several times to point out the similarities. ''Bloom County'' earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987. The strip eventually appeared in over 1200 newspapers around the world until Berkeley retired the daily strip in 1989 . He replaced this strip with the surreal Sunday-only cartoon '' Outland '' in 1989 , which reused some of the ''Bloom County'' characters, including Opus The Penguin and Bill The Cat . He ended ''Outland'' in 1995 , stating that he wanted to terminate the strip while it was still popular. At that time, he said, "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon. The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age less gracefully than their creators." Eight years later, Breathed began producing the comic strip '' Opus '', a Sunday-only strip featuring Opus , the penguin who was one of the central characters in ''Bloom County''. He colors the cartoon himself with Adobe Photoshop , claiming that the advances in technology since 1990 have created an opportunity for "something that ''looks'' cool on a comic page." Other works In addition to his syndicated cartoon work, which has produced eleven best-selling cartoon collections, he has also produced five children's books, two of which, '' A Wish For Wings That Work '' and ''Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big'' were made into animated works. Since 1992 , he has designed a greeting card and gift ensemble collection for American Greetings , featuring the Bloom County characters Opus , Bill The Cat and Milquetoast The Cockroach . Breathed's writing has also been featured in numerous publications including '' Life '', '' Boating '', and '' Travel And Leisure ''. He was also responsible for the cartoon art in the film '' Secondhand Lions '', which featured a cartoon named ''Walter and Jasmine''. Breathed has been a supporter of the Animal Rights group PETA and illustrated the cover of their "Compassionate Cookbook", as well as T-shirts and other merchandise for them. Personal life In 1986 , Berkeley broke his back in an Ultralight-plane crash and almost lost his right arm to a boat propeller. Breathed and his wife, wildlife photographer and Psychotherapist Jody Boyman , and their daughter Sophie live in Southern California . He is reportedly a very private person, and although he has given interviews to on-line magazines such as ''The Onion'' and ''Salon'', he has rarely given face-to-face or telephone interviews and resists talking about himself. He and his wife support Animal Rights and his book ''Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound'' encourages animal adoption. Books
Awards Breathed won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. Breathed was nominated for the Squiddy Award for Favorite Political Cartoonist in 1990. External links
|