...to be stuck inside the shelter with the penguin blues again!

Give Keith Knight some watercolor pencils, a brush and some time, and let him upgrade his excellent The K Chronicles to the full-color strip he deserves. And no freaking dandelion patches, either...too much like a cotton field.

And if the editors of Salon decide to try to get another strip in here, they should check this list of "The 10 Comic Strips That Should ****ing End"...

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/09/the_10_newspaper_comic_strips_that_need_to_fking_e.php

Usually the answer is fuck you.

Mark Alan Stamaty, where are you now?

(Actually I corresponded with him a few months ago).

Nothing would make me happier than to see Washingtoon on Salon.com...

I will never forget the strip where Patrick J Buchanan steered Reagan's head so far to the right that he traveled back in time to the McCarthy witch hunt era...

Ahh in the previous letters here the nitwits without any sense of humor come out asking for more political cartoons and missing the point of what a cartoon is for. Really? more politics is what we need?

If Salon picks a strictly political cartoon I won't read it. All you ass wipes go back to the archives to that wonderful Opus where he says enough politics, don't waste your summer on it. Breathed was right on the money there.I hope Opus isn't over because theres really no strip that can replace what was funny and relevant and drawn so beautifully.

Breathed don't end it, suffer through like we all do.

Isn't this a political cartoon?

Sometimes politics can be hilarious. Especially in this election. This cartoon I don't see as particularly funny but many of BB's cartoons are certainly funny.

My recent favorite is the one with the alien and a flying saucer. That one had an Apple logo on the alien's translator. What made that cartoon was the strange alien. No feet but used a ladder.

Click on my name and you will get the current Pat Oliphant political cartoon. I find some of these to be funny.

Think of the hatchlings. Can't he please get to retire comfortably at the "Lillian Booth Home" for retired funnies (whatever it's called)? Let him join Calvin & Hobbes, the Wizard of Id, Brenda Starr, and Pogo.

It was political, but it was also funny.

Salon.com is primarily about politics, and Opus / Bloom County / et al was frequently so as well.

If you don't want politics or political humor, maybe "Classic Peanuts" would be more to your liking.

In any case, stirring up shit by calling people asswipes doesn't help the tenor of conversation in the comments.

Maybe you hadn't had your coffee yet...?

It seems the last few strips have been your long good-bye. You're a smart man whose ideas are due consideration and it seems you're saying that your characters will see the sunny meadows no more. Will you? If not, are they sharing your fate, since they are you? Or will they live the living death of a dead man sitting (in a cell)? In their case, it's the cells that comprise fading comic strips.

...and this week features the long-awaited return of Basil St. John, rescuing her and his son-by-some-baby-momma from a typical comic strip predicament.

Wow, I thought that I was the only one who remembered Washingtoon. I thought that Stamaty was dead, or something! He's still writing it?

Is this comic strip

Such as...Opus/Bloom County is Hell, because the characters never get better and never advance. Basically the characters say "I am in hell" every strip.

You urban sophisticates like to think that comic strips are far above comic BOOKS. Which you probably don't know still exist any more, because to find them you would have to go to special stores full of stinky, ugly, sexually and socially incompetent geeks to buy them.

Well, while sometimes the desire for change may go insane in the worlds of DC and Marvel and Image (see Spider-Man "One More Day/Brand New Day" and Superman's death a few years ago) at least SOMETHING changes. Breathed, and most other syndicated strip creators, are forced to stomp over the same territory again and again, because you strip readers can't handle change, and you also can't handle the truth.

And speaking for my fellow stinky, ugly, sexually and socially incompetent geeks, we have it all over you comic strip snobs.

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Quesada took two of the strongest marriages in comicdom (Peter and MJ Parker, and Ree and Sue Richards) and had the writers break them up while crapping all over them for reasons I don't know - but suspect that, were I his wife or daughter, I would be very worried about....

I loved WASHINGTOON when it was in THE VILLAGE VOICE during the Eighties! Where's he publishing it now?

Comics do not have to be funny.

People do not need to be entertained all the time.

Sometimes just creating a thought is enough.

Berkeley Breathed has traveled a long journey and he has been kind enough to share it with us. Give him a break. Creating something new week after week is hard. He has done his job well and is now giving us his farewells.

It takes courage to write 'The End' and bow to the audience.

-- TN (Finland)

Stamaty's not publishing the strip anymore. It's hard to discern exactly when he stopped, or why - google does not reveal much, and I left the US in 1987 so I was not reading the local press when it was discontinued.

Apparently Stamaty writes occasionally for slate.com

I have his email address, but I'm not publishing it here.

GREAT! I have adopted three cats and a dog from shelters. What's a penguin to add to the mix? I'll buy more fish. Also, I like the pooch in the food dish and will take him/her, too.

Wishing B.B. all the BEST forever and ever.