Outland, Comic Strip
- Artist/Author/Producer: Berkeley Breathed
- Confronting Bodies: Houston Post and other papers
- Dates of action: August 1993
- Location: Houston, Texas, etc.
- Description of the Art Work
- The strip featured an exchange between the cartoon's star, the penguin Opus,
and a woman who comes upon Opus and two other male animal characters
sitting in their underwear. "How do you know if a woman has been working
at a computer? There's White Out on the screen," Opus jokes.
"You dumb hypocrites," the woman replies. "You mock the half of
humanity that makes your graceless existence bearable. Men should pause
for one moment and take another long hard look at the very thing that
brings meaning to their meaningless lives." The strip then shows the
woman walking away and the three male characters peeking into their
underwear.
- Description of incident
- The Houston Post pulled the August 1 installment of the Outland comic
strip by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, fearing it
would offend readers. The Post substituted a previous Outland and
made copies of the strip available to readers at its offices. The switch
was also then explained in the paper.
- Results of incident
- The installment of Outland was pulled from papers nationwide.
Source: Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association