Outland (comic strip)

Medium: Print Journalism

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Artist: Berkeley Breathed

Confronting Bodies: Houston Post and other papers

Dates of Action: August 1993

Location: Houston, Texas, etc.

Description of Artwork: 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.

The 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