Comic Con 2010: Berkeley Breathed lives!

Let’s see, this makes five Comic-Cons for me — 1999, 2006, 2007, 2009 and now — and there’s always something new to see. I’ll spare you the pictures of teenage girls in skimpy “superhero” outfits and big sweaty guys with signs that say “FREE HUGS”; you can find those lots of places, and I’m sure they weren’t new 11 years ago.

But I’d never seen this before:

Kinda sweet, don’t you think? Reader Basia correctly notes that these two are paying tribute to Daft Punk, but wonders why they are at Comic Con. Hey, if “Hawaii Five-0″ can come here, so can these guys…

Speaking of firsts, when I saw Berkeley Breathed was on the Comic Con schedule this morning, my first thought was, “Has he ever been here before?” Turns out, he hadn’t. Amazing, isn’t it? But I think given the “Bloom County” creator’s longtime antipathy to the editorial cartoonists’ association, and the fact the editorial cartoonists always have a booth at Comic Con, it was one of those “any club that would have YOU …” things.

click to enlarge

Anyway, it was nice to see he’d gotten over it, because I’d never seen him in person, but like everyone else I’d read the “Onion” interview that showed him to be a very funny person,as you might expect. And in fact, he made sure to get in his shots at the National Cartoonists Society, noting that he’d won a Pulitzer Prize but never an award from the NCS, “because you have to join the NCS to get an award from them.” Yeah, I’m sure that would break the Breathed household budget.

A much funnier dig at the ACA came later, though people around me didn’t find this as hilarious as I did. Remember that petition that all those Pulitzer winning cartoonists put out last month defending their right to free speech? Well, Breathed posted it and proceeded to mock it royally, making the point that it’s not the victims of speech suppression, it’s the perpetrators who need to be acknowledging the supremacy of the right to expression.

As a means of making his point, he posted this very funny and (I must assume) fake petition from his boy Milo’s school….

He also posted some hilarious cartoons that the author of “Calvin & Hobbes,” Bill Watterson, had sent to Breathed. The two are great friends, as you might expect two guys who hate the cartooning establishment to be. They are all satires, and if the irritating photo cop hadn’t made me put down my camera, I’d have gotten the raunchy exchange of cartoons between Watterson and Breathed involving Bill the Cat, Opus, and a naked woman….

That last one is a reference to a story Breathed has told in the past about President Reagan calling him to say thank you for including a flattering picture of Nancy in a “Bloom County” strip, and Breathed responding (truthfully) with, “Mr. President, I’m not wearing any pants right now.”

He was also emphatic that he’s not going back to newspapers anymore, not after the Washington Post nixed this seemingly innocuous panel:

“It’s the nervousness with newspapers,” said Breathed. “This never would’ve happened with ‘Bloom County.’”

I would only point out that this wouldn’t have happened with “Bloom County” because “Bloom County” was funnier than “Opus” ever was.

Breathed also talked about his children’s books, including “Mars Needs Moms,” which is being made into a Disney animated film and being released in March. I enjoyed hearing about those a lot more than all the ruminating over the penguin, though I did finally learn where the source of Breathed’s inspiration for Opus came from:

Comic-Con is increasingly becoming the place you have to be to see the premieres of TV shows, which is kind of a pain for TV critics, but the networks care even less about us than they did before. Fortunately, if you weren’t on hand for the world premiere of NBC’s superhero action comedy “The Cape” … you didn’t miss much. It was awful, even if these two people are working on it:

Well, at least it will sound good and look good.

And then there is “Teen Wolf,” the 1986 comedy that MTV is remaking … as a thriller. A very compelling pitch, as you can see from the half-empty ballroom for the “Teen Wolf” panel.

More tomorrow. Oh, wait, I guess it is tomorrow. That’s what I get for going to a late-night party. I’d tell you who was hosting it, but then you’d have to kill me …