Berkeley Breathed
| Berkeley Breathed | |
|---|---|
| Born | Guy Berkeley Breathed. June 21, 1957 Encino, Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | cartoonist, illustrator, screenwriter |
| Pseudonym(s) | Berkie |
|
Notable works
|
Bloom County comic strip (1980–1989, 2015–present) Outland Sunday strip (1989–1995) Opus Sunday strip (2003–2008). |
| Awards |
Pulitzer Prize – For editorial cartooning 1987 |
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (/ˈbrɛðᵻd/ BREDH-əd; born June 21, 1957) is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip and more recent Internet cartoons that reflect sociopolitical issues as understood by fanciful characters (e.g., Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and through humorous analogies. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987.
Born in Encino, California, and raised in Houston, Texas, Breathed attended Westchester High School in Houston.
Breathed became published first when he was hired part-time by the Austin American-Statesman to draw editorial cartoons for the newspaper. This job was short-lived; he was dismissed shortly after one of his cartoons caused outrage. His first comic strip published regularly was The Academia Waltz, which appeared in the Daily Texan, in 1978 while he was a student at the University of Texas. During his time at the University of Texas, Breathed self-published two collections of The Academia Waltz, using the profits to pay his tuition. The comic strip attracted the notice of 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 paraplegic Vietnam war veteran Cutter John. In the beginning, the strip's style was so similar to that of another popular strip, Doonesbury, that Doonesbury's creator Garry Trudeau wrote to Breathed several times to indicate their similarities. Breathed has acknowledged that he borrowed liberally from Doonesbury during his early career. In the Outland collection, One Last Little Peek, Breathed even put an early Bloom County side-by-side with the Doonesbury comic strip from which it obviously took its idea.
...
Wikipedia