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| Tales of the Parodyverse >> View Post |
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Considering the generation of politics that it came from, it seems strangely appropriate that it should end now. For those who haven't seen it yet, the complete final story arc of Opus. Like many other politically precocious kids who grew up during the 1980s, Bloom County was a huge part of my childhood. At least as much as MAD Magazine, its constant series of up-to-the-minute pop culture references and satirical political allegories really wound up informing my own political and media worldviews, well into my early years of technical adulthood. Opus the Penguin, Bill the Cat, Hodge-Podge and Portnoy, Oliver Wendell Jones, Michael Binkley, the Basselope and Steve Dallas were almost like The McLaughlin Group of my childhood, hashing out the social and political issues of the day through their ambitions and paranoias, from "Fundamentally Oral Bill" to "Billy and the Boingers" (the frequently catatonic, repeatedly temporarily deceased Bill was a surprisingly reliable driver for drama within the strip), as well as the inevitable (and inevitably disastrous) run for the presidency of Bill and Opus every four years. And then came Outland, and while I kind of got what Berkeley Breathed was trying to do, even my most charitable readings of it made it seem to me like nothing so much as a serious misfire. And then came Opus, by which point I'd long since given up on Breathed, and nothing about the unremarkable, treading-water quality of those strips served to change my mind on that score. And then came the end. And goddamn, but Berke pulled it out in the clutch to stick an ace landing. The Guantanamo parody wasn't brilliant, but it was welcome and well-done. The first warning signs started creeping up on me when I felt my heartstrings being tugged at with Opus offering the shelter dog his first "warm bed." I actually got a lump in my throat when Steve saw the ghosts of Milo Bloom, Cutter John, Portnoy, Oliver and Bill, racing past and waving goodbye. And then ... What's weird is, as perfect as Opus' happy ending was for him, I was much more moved by Steve's reaction to it. Steve Dallas, the perpetually sunglasses-clad embodiment of cynical selfishness, was smiling with genuine warmth and joy, to see his oldest friend's final fate of pure peace and contentment. And it wasn't even his smile that did me in emotionally. When I saw his eyes, that's when I broke down into tears. If "where you are at the end is where you'll always be ... forever," does this mean that Steve's happy ending is seeing Opus happy? Either way, I say now, goodnight Steve, goodnight Opus, goodnight Berke, and goodnight to the world and all the rest of its inhabitants that you created. You helped define the era that made up my childhood, but I suppose it's time for the children of this era to define this emerging new era for themselves. It's time for us all to move on, but we'll always have our memories. | |||
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