Political ads will end soon enough. I never see any but Salon has many comments.

As often as not, it's the last line that makes or breaks a Berkeley Breathed strip. "Alex. He's a penguin" is one of those lines. Long may Berk reign.

The line about "GOD BLESS GEORGE BUSH!!! GOD BLESS GEORGE BUSH!!!" was probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen!

The meadow. With dandelions twixt your toes, a swimming hole and Cutter John's wheelchair. Think of it as a sort of Valhalla for the sentimental and jaded Reagan years. Thanks for sharing with us, Breathed. There is a void between one person and the next, and you have bridged that void gracefully.

with every letter so far.

Opus seems to find the old Bloom County humor on his way out. Ah well. The last line was just like the old days.

I also think the dandelion patch is where he'll end up. Or should. Funny, those were never my favorites like others found them, but at this point it seems the perfect place to remember Opus, staring up at the clouds, waxing philosophical.

Or just waxing. Ouch!

When you think about it, the "Oops!" when Opus realized what he had just said, is the best. Aside from the human beauty of the bright pink oops moments in all our lives, what he had just said kind of said it all.

Mr. Breathed, you just need to pull out that comic strip you wrote years ago - the one right after the end of the world, I mean "The Day After", c.1983. Nice place to go for a walk after watching the world get torched by nuclear war. It turns out we came a lot closer to nuclear war in 1983 than during the Cuban missile crisis...

In a narrative that reads like a thriller, Rhodes reveals how the Reagan administration’s unprecedented arms buildup in the early 1980s led ailing Soviet leader Yuri Andropov to conclude that Reagan must be preparing for a nuclear war. In the fall of 1983, when NATO staged a larger than usual series of field exercises that included, uniquely, a practice run-up to a nuclear attack, the Soviet military came very close to launching a defensive first strike on Europe and North America. With Soviet aircraft loaded with nuclear bombs warming up on East German runways, U.S. intelligence organizations finally realized the danger. - review, Arsenals of Folly

Only our comics and our comedians allow us to get by this stuff without losing our minds... so thanks for everything!

the most important statement of the week.

We've already seen Opus' tendency to escape into his fantasy dreamworld "with coconuts." Perhaps the ending here will evoke Terry Gilliam's Brazil, in which the hero is imprisoned within the bowels of the government/bureaucracy, but driven insane to escape and find peace in his "happy place?"

I vote for the meadow too! Maybe he goes into his anxiety closet, passes the door, and there are the dandelions!

How many times has Breathed retired Opus "forever"?

Marx On Mars BY 2012!

This program is the answer to all the divisive nastiness. Collectivism and redistribution and peaceful coexistance just might work up there where the vibes are different.

Opus and all of BB's little children, especially Bill the Cat, should stay here, and first let those on Mars show us left behind selfish Earthniks just how well their ideas can work up there.

In the meantime, maybe the librals can visualize what would happen back here if Michelle and the girls were kidnapped by terrorists, and, the one guy caught from the group of kidnappers, after about a half hour of mock drowning, gives up his colleagues and the Obama Family is saved.

Librals seem to think that wishing something to be so, makes it so, or, hoping something to be so, makes it so. So we can hope that there might be some gentlemanly way to combat terrorism. I don't think Danny Pearl would have gone to Pakistan and trusted the healing power of dialogue had he not have been so thoroughly versed in this kind of wishful thinking.

"Vince. He's a penguin." Hysterical. But please, Berkeley - don't go.

...that BB hangs on long enough to do an episode with Sarah Palin in it. With a riding crop, and jackboots.

On a toilet store, of course.

Will someone please tell me where the hell Mr. Breathed thinks he's going ? His contract with America isn't up yet ? Seriously, I'm in a panic about this....

Does water in the face bother a penguin?

Penguins dive quite deep to catch fish.

The last panel shows waterboarding with a shrub watching.

You seem to feel that fearing something makes it likely. You come up with highly unlikely comic book scenarios seemingly designed to make us go "Oh, you're right! If that terrible thing were to happen, we'd WANT that 24 guy to waterboard the bad guy!"

I've got one for you. What if that terrorist kidnapper swallowed a nuclear weapon designed to be triggered...BY WATER!!! Didn't think about that one, did you???