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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 4, 1985)
l w -4- I I By WAYNE L. GRABEIN Reporter Waddling its way into 284 newspapers nationwide, the popular Bloom County comic strip, featuring Opus the pen guin, Milo and Binkley, emerges from the deepest clos ets of Berke Breathed’s mind. “Ideas come in my head, I work them out on paper and it goes on the strip,” Breathed savs. “There’s no philosophy involved.” The University of Texas graduate savs he enjoys weav ing euphemisms and meta phors into his comic strip and, whenever possible, exaggerat ing the represented subject matter. Trving to make a metaphor of real life situations in the small life of the comic strip would be as close to a philoso phy that he has, Breathed says. Manv of the cartoonist’s eu phemisms and metaphors ap pear in poetic form and are usually recited or sung by one of the strip’s most popular characters, Opus. “Opus was a surprise. He came out of left field and I don’t know where he came from,” the Iowa resident says. “It’s the kind of character car toonists look for all their lives and that I just stumbled upon.” Breathed explains that the success of Opus as a character was the result of choosing an animal, a penguin, which ap peals to the public and then adding the appropriate person ality. Although it’s a combina tion that works, it's not a for mula to create other characters by, he savs. After the character’s first ap- pearence in Bloom Count}' in June of 1981, the bow-tied pen guin remained nameless for eight months until he declared his name was Opus during a series of strips Breathed calls the “Penguin Evolution Trials.” Breathed says the name Opus, though, actually came from the song title “Magnum Opus” on the album “Left Overture” bv the musical group Kansas. With Opus, Breathed is able to wade through sometimes controversial subjects with little public rebuttal which he attributes to the wide appeal of Opus. “You just have ‘to know enough to take advantage of the character and not take it for granted when it comes along,” the 27-year-old cartoo nist says. Yet, one character from the earlier Bloom Countv strips was doomed from the start. He was a flamboyant bum named Skip Limekiller. ”He’s an example of a char acter that could well be getting too close to *Duke' in Doones- bury and I didn't need those characters,” Breathed says. Comparisons of Bloom County and Doonesburv have been made ever since Breathed started cartooning 10 years ago with his Academia Waltz strip in U.T.’s The Daily Texan. “People always saw that I had been heavily influenced bv him (Garrv Trudeau, Doones- bury creator) and before recog nizing the distictions, they made the comparisons,” Breathed savs. Although the photojourna lism graduate admits that Doo- nesbury’s influence can still be seen in Bloom County, Breathed says he considers himself much more visually oriented than Trudeau. “Although he’s a wonderful writer, I don’t think he’s a bril liant artist,” Breathed says of Trudeau. The Bloom County cartoon ist also savs his approach to the world is more from the posi tion of anarchy rather than the quiet liberalism of Doones- buiy. “After five years of Bloom Count}', if someone still thinks its a Doonesburv clone, then I think it's an insult on their part,” Breathed says. Bv using a reversed, mirror image of his signature on his cartoon, he displays Bloom County’s uniqueness in an other, subtle wav. Breathed ex plains that Leonardo da Vinci, who originally used the tech nique to prevent his notes from being read, has long been a hero of his. “I always felt that if anybody that brilliant could do anything that ridiculous, he was my kind of man,” Breathed says. He uses the technique for his signature in honor of da Vinci. Breathed is honoring an other person when Milo Bloom, a slightly eccentric, 10-year-old boy, assumes the role of the trouble-making journalist at the town’s newspaper. Breathed says that of all his characters, he could relate the best to Milo in this role because of the mischief he gets into. “I used to get into a lot of trouble myself in journalism,” he says. He attributs many of these problems to making up most of his facts while at U.T. With his success in cartoon ing, Breathed considers his photojournalism degree essen tially wasted. Although he does’t anticipate drawing Bloom County for more than 10 years, Breathed plans to do work in writing and cinema in stead of using his photographic training. In retrospect, Breathed says he wished he had learned more about his environment bv tak ing classes such as history', so ciology and language. But his ability to conceive such standing classics as Bink ley’s closet full of anxieties, penguin lust and dandelion breaks in Milo’s Meadow proves Breathed already knows and understands much about the world around him. \ OPAS brings good music, coi II The MSC Opera and Per forming Arts Committee is bringing two favorites to the stage in College Station — Lerner and Loewes fantasti cally French musical “GiGi” and Neil Simon’s award win ning comedv “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” Simon’s play is about many things, but mostly about the job and pain of growing up smart, sensitive and aware. Si mon’s protagonist is 15-year- old Eugene Morris Jerome. He’s a would-be-writer who keeps a constant journal of the activ ities-of the eccentric household that he lives in. Of course, Eu gene would rather be a base ball player with the New York Yankees, but will settle for the writer job if the baseball thing doesn’t pan out. The Jerome family consists of his mother and father, his 18 vear-old brother, his mother’s widowed sister and her two daughters. This clan all lives in cramped quarters in a house near the beach area of Brook lyn, New York. Concentrating on two con secutive early Wednesday eve nings, Simon has constructed the play as a series of vignettes, all interlocked with the overall theme of survival during the Depression. The various prob lems deal with thwarted ambi tion, late-blooming indepen dence, physical illness and personal dishonor — small ev eryday problesm that ultima tely change these people’s lives. One critic said: “It is the true watershed play fo Simon’s ca reer. By rummaging through memories of his youth and combining them with new found theatrical restraint and superb plavwriting, crafts manship, Neil Simon has cre ated an instant American clas sic.” Tickets in Zone I are sold out. But Zones II and III are still available for these prices respectively: Students $15.25, Regular $17. Students $13 and Regular $14.50. Just three days later, April 18, the cast of Gigi will flourish onto the stage in that way that only the French can do. This stage rendention is adapted from the award win ning film (11 Academy Awards). As a movie it follows no traditions and holds an im portant position in the history of “movie musicals.” It set manv trends and ushered in a rich new era of musical com edy. The celebrated team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe has produced a sensatinal score with many unforgetable tunes. A delicious kaleidoscope set in _ turn-of-the-century Paris, GiGi features such memorable songs as “Thank Heaven For Little Girls,” “I Remember I Well,” “The Night They In vented Champagne,” and the title song, “Gigi,” which won an Oscar for Best Song. Adapted from of tire French author Colette’s best known novels, the musical is the story' of a young girl who ave been trained from childhood to catch a man, though not for marriage. For she is the daugh ter of a long line of elegant and expensive “courtesans,” and her well-meaning grand mother and aunt, who have taken such care to bring their charge up “right,” are taken quite by surprise to find out that Gigi would rather be a rich man’s wife than his mis tress. Stage and screen stars Betsy Palmer and Taina Elg join Louis Joudan in this new stage version with newcomers Lisa Howard and Tom Hewitt play ing the romantic leads. Tickets are on sale now in the MSC Box Office. Zone I is sold out. Zones II and III are still available for these prices respectively: Student $21.50, Regular $24 and Student $19.50, Regular $21.50. If tickets are bought for both “Gigi” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” a special discount is availble. \ Brighton Beach Memoirs