What’s going on with Berkeley Breathed and Opus? The Sunday strip is on a “life flashing before my eyes” nostalgia trip (with a few quick digs at the Governor of Alaska thrown in). A recent Lio strip with a freshly dug Opus grave made me really take notice (graveyards are common on Lio, but not headstones for comic strips). In a brief Texas Monthly interview in April 2007, Breathed, doing publicity for his book Mars Needs Moms, mentioned Opus’s death as one of his upcoming projects. And he said he meant it “literally” and perhaps in conjunction with the end of the Bush presidency, though his wife threatened to leave him if he did kill off the penguin. The Daily Cartoonist’s Alan Gardner has called Amy Lago, Breathed’s editor, several times and each time she has said there is “no official word” from him on the demise of Opus or the strip. But, as Gardner points out, there may be an unofficial story that they aren’t going to put out until they are good and ready. Officially, on Breathed’s website, he has a new book out Pete & Pickles (which he stole from his daughter) and a tease for “The Opus Paradise Contest” coming on October 12.