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Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (born June 21, 1957) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American cartoonist,...

Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (born June 21, 1957) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director, and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip which dealt with socio-political issues as understood by fanciful characters (e.g. Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and humorous analogies. Born in Encino, California and raised in Houston, Texas, Breathed (pronounced BREATH-ed) attended Westchester High School. Breathed became published first when he was hired part-time by the Austin American-Statesman to draw editorial cartoons for the newspaper. This job was short-lived; he was dismissed shortly after one of his cartoons caused outrage. His first comic strip published regularly was The Academia Waltz, which appeared in the Daily Texan, in 1978 while he was a student at the University of Texas. The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of the Washington Post, who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam war veteran Cutter