Just trying to enjoy his Sunday funnies on the can (ah, yes) and mortality comes knocking. Best wishes to Mr. Breathed if he's wrapping the loveable penguin again. I respect his desire to maintain control of his creations.

I forgot to mention the early Archy and the love-lorn Cat, Mehitable.Archy, typing away- Most loveable cockroach ever- also still available.

Nothing since has ever matched the anarchic, bizzarre, outcaste,misanthropic Wilhelm Busch. "Die Fromme Helene and "Knopp Trilogie" are amoung his best sfforts. A 19th Cen.true comic strip geniusi

Most recently a prototype from his masterful "Max und Moritz" was uncovered in an unrelated collection from old Newspaper archives.

The modest few frames of the new discovery ran in 8x oversize in every newspaper in Germany just a few months ago- to a national jubilation.

This, from a long-gone cartoonist expelled from the academy in Munich for throwing a ripe cheese at the administrators during a banquet. He was influenced by "Struwelpeter". a slightly earlier Schadenfrohfest meant to teach children to groom properly and not start fatal fires (Paulinchen and her Cats)- and not to be racially prjudiced (Niklaus and the ink bottle strip).

Busch's stories were sometimes quite long in their serializations and extremely well-crafted. Always in the blackest humor.

The cartoonist never married and retired reletively early because , well, he just couldn't deal with his fellow earthlings.

I think Max und Moritz (Lausbuben precursors to "Katzenjammer Kids") is available in English, still but the translation cannot come close to the perfect rhyme and insanity of the origional.

Links are all over for both Wilhelm Busch and Struwelpeter (sp?)

So timelessness is assured for any Breathed or Walt Kelley or Al Cap or Jimmy Haitloe no matter what.

When Busch signed off, he did so with a shudderingly moving and magical illustrated short story "Schmetterling" (Butterfly) which seemed to allagorize German national history and future (the antagonist is named "Nazi"- the thing was finished before 1885. He wrote the fatal story to say goodbye to his readership.

Check out the ancient ones (the Strips that influenced "Yellow Kid" and all the rest). Maybe there were many others before Busch, but his are the most modernly readable and the strips are never , ever out-of -print.

FBorFW is not ending only her current style of writing is. She will be returning in a month or so and try to return to her original more light hearted strip style.

As for the chance this Opus strip is Mr. Breathed's way of saying he will not allow his strip to continue after he is no longer able to write it. I understand and agree with that choice wholeheartedly.

Although not due to death or pain, I can recall when Calvin & Hobbes' Creator chose to not continue his work. I was saddened by the loss, but at the same time I was happy to not have to endure some diminished version of the original brilliance.

barbinwoods,

You apparently are not fortunate enough to live in close proximity to mischievous quadrupeds. Should one align the toilet tissue in the manner you suggest, it would allow a curious critter, or one with ill intent, to rapidly unravel the roll; however, as depicted, the bum tissue would only circle about, harmlessly re-rolling itself with every revolution.

This may be a very subtle reference on Mr. Breathed's part to the Circle of Life this strip addresses.

More overtly, I suggest that Opus has had the foresight to rig his roll the way he does in the off chance that Bill the Cat might pop by and suffer a moment of scratch fever!

I didn't know that Lynn Johnston was planning to wrap up For Better or for Worse today. I used to love that strip, but have stopped following it since the two local print newspapers deteriorated to the point where they weren't even worth it for the comics and the crossword. I'm a little sorry to see it go, but then again, if she'd kept it going any longer she'd have had to kill off one or more of the grandparents, and you remember how upset people were when she even just killed off the dog! Ah well, farewell, Pattersons, live long and phosphor.

As one who acknowledges being in the last third of my life, I grow used to losing friends and relatives to this world.

I hope I don't know what today's strip is signaling but fear I do.

Breathed, I hope you are facing a restful retirement - in any case I will miss your brilliant work.

Berk Breathed has accomplished what the greatest minds of previous generations would have only fleetingly, in their wildest fantasies, dared to dream of: he has conquered human mortality, and will live forever. The practically endless hours of free time afforded him by his success as a cartoonist have enabled him to develop a cure for death.

So that explains the comic strip.

then we want to know what's the point you're making here, dude? the comic strips going over and over again. well my first though on that was the comic I've never been able to stand; good old GIL THORPE. I mean it seems like it's perpetually stuck in that early 60's time frame and revolves around coach gil talking to his lettermen-jocks; their high school troubles with their girlfriends- same old shit! and then there's mallard fillmore, which, funny, is definitely the author's values' crusade to enlighten us " unenlightened" americans with his republican ideas. [ was there where I first learned of those " concerned women for america"; the " christian", anti-feminist, anti-thesis to the N.O.W. women!]

but just what is berk getting at here with opus? does this mean that, like ol' bloom county in the early 90's; it's time to move on again?

In my local paper, Opus is printed right below FBoFW. I assumed that Opus was referring to it as FBoFW's (saccharine-laden, craptacular) last original ran today. It will be recycled over and over again.

that the bathroom tissue comes out the top, not the bottom.

thank you for your attention to this matter.