Opus (comic strip) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Opus is the fourth comic strip by Berke Breathed, following The Academia Waltz, Bloom County and Outland. It is centered around a core character in the latter two, Opus the penguin.In the series opener, we see Opus relaxed, sitting in a folding chair on the beach. A woman then comes up to him and says "Hungry, Opus?" Then, she says "Guido regurgitated a squid. Let's eat." We then see that he is not on the beach after all, but in the barren, frozen wasteland of Antarctica, and that the woman in his dream is actually a fellow penguin. He then says to the audience "And I suppose YOU'RE where you thought you'd be in ten years?"
In this feature Opus is finally reunited with his mother, after two failed attempts to search for her in the Bloom County strip. Sad to see him without a mate, his mother marries him with a considerably large and ugly female penguin, against his will. Opus then escapes to the United States. He does so by using a stolen Mars rover.
In the immigration office, Opus is kicked out because he couldn't think of a hyphenated ethnic name for himself. In the last panel, he says "Well YOU try and hyphenate 'hottie.'"
When the airport security is inspecting him, they grab him by the knees and say things such as "REMOVE TROUSERS, PLEASE!!" and "SIR, IF YOU DON'T ALLOW US TO COMPLETE OUR PUBLIC HUMILIATION OF YOU, YOU WILL HAVE TO HITCHHIKE TO OMAHA!!". This is an obvious exaggeration of airport security methods.
Upon arriving in Bloom County, he begins searching for his old friends. Michael Binkley became a teen eunuch in Tibet because he is humiliated by his first kiss; she nicknamed him "Gumming Nemo." Bill the Cat's carcass was hinted to be the source of the recent BSE epidemic. However, Bill was recently shown to be chosen for the next mayor of Bloom County. He got the message when he played Garfield for a promotion at a mall. Although the translucent figure of Steve Dallas is shown with a question mark beside him, in the last Outland feature, he is shown to be in a relationship with Mark Slackmeyer of the Doonesbury comic strip.
Opus in this feature has an irrational attraction to technology, first evidenced when he picked up what he thought was an iPod in a restaraunt (it was actually a cell phone that used Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a ringtone). The following is an abridged trancript...
Phone: Hi, honey could you pick up some milk on the way home?
Opus: I'm Opus.
Phone: Hopeless? Why?
Opus: I heard the Fifth...
Phone: The FIFTH?!? Who told you about a fifth? I've only had three affairs!
Opus: Look, I should leave...
Phone: You're leaving me?? Very well then. I'll take the dog, you keep the Porsche.
Opus: I don't want the Porsche
Phone: Good! It'll be on fire when you get home!!
In another recent cartoon, Opus again answers a cell phone that is left lying somewhere. The person calling keeps saying "You're breaking up..." and Opus keeps saying "No, I'm not", but then he starts falling apart, literally. When he asks who's calling, the caller replies "Oprah's Health and Wholeness Center."
Opus and Bill finally reunited on June 13, 2004. Bill had a gift of tulips to give to Opus, and was hiding them in the back of his underwear. Opus knew this, but spaced-out Bill kept looking for it, but eventually cried out, thinking he had had lost it. He then bent over to hug Opus, knocking over the tulips in the process. In the final panel, an exasperated Opus said "Colorful friends are mixed blessings".
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