Intermission – April 21 — Evolution Success

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Brad Guigar

Build-a-Baddie Returns (And It’s Bigger, Badder, and More Chaotic)

The last Build-a-Baddie Poll was such a hit, it spun off not one but two projects — a microfic and a 1,500-word short story!

So naturally… we’re doing it again.

Welcome back to Build-a-Baddie — the crowd-sourced character experiment where you decide:

  • The creature

  • The personality

  • The situation they’re caught in

I take your winning combo and turn it into a brand-new illustration.

There’s also a Wildcard section if you want to whisper your weirdest ideas into the void. No promises… but I will read them.

Voting opens this week on Patreon. Bring your best (and worst) ideas.

Transcript — Evolution Success Stories

A single-panel cartoon shows two bug-like creatures standing on a forest floor surrounded by large green leaves. Both have tall, thin, purple bodies with spindly limbs and antennae. The bug on the right has colorful, symmetrical butterfly wings with orange, black, and white patterns and looks relatively normal — an evolution success story The bug on the left has a strange, mismatched set of wings that resemble bold, graphic signage instead of natural wings. The wings are black with bright orange arrows and large words pointing in different directions, including “TASTY,” “HERE,” and “YUM!” with arrows directing attention toward the bug’s own body. The malformed-wing bug looks uneasy, while the butterfly-wing bug looks on. Beneath the comic, a caption reads: “All I’m saying is… it’s easy to be a fan of evolution if all you hear about are the success stories…”

To the right of the panel is a blue box that reads: “Intermission — The Evil Inc storyline will continue next week.”

‘Opus’ Movie May Be in the Works

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Brad Guigar

‘Opus’ Movie May Be in the Works

This bodes ill…

[Editor & Publisher] Will Opus the penguin be starring in a movie?

Alan Gardner reported on his DailyCartoonist.com blog that the ComingSoon.net site listed a film, called “Opus: The Last Christmas,” that’s tentatively slated for theatrical release on Dec. 19, 2008.

ComingSoon.net said the animated movie would be written and directed by Berkeley Breathed, who does the “Opus” comic strip for the Washington Post Writers Group.

The Opus character first appeared in the 1980s in Breathed’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Bloom County” comic. Read more.

I stand second to no one — no one. in my esteem for Berke Breathed’s Bloom County.

Bloom County.

Bloom County. Not Outland. Not Opus.

Bloom County.

The news of an Opus movie is somewhat a disappointment. See, Bloom County was a beautiful perfection that I got to see played out day after day after day in the eighties. My subscription to the Detroit Free Press in college was bought solely for that six-inch-by-two-inch plot of the comics page. It was my ritual and my obsession.

When a reader compares my comic to Bloom County, it’s like the feeling marathon runners feel as the finish line ribbon snaps across their chest.

Without the dry heaves.

Which is why I don’t want to see this movie made.

Every attempt by Breathed to recapture that magic has only served to tarnish and diminish those happy memories of tearing through the Freep to find my daily dose. Outland was pale and lifeless. Opus makes Outland look masterful.

An Opus movie?

I just don’t think my memories can sustain such a blow.