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Berkeley Breathed (last name rhymes with "method") (born June 21, 1957Berkeley Breathed is a cartoonist, children's book author, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip which dealt with socio-political issues, as seen through the eyes of highly exaggerated characters (e.g. Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin) and humorous analogies.

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Breathed was born on June 21, 1957, in Encino, California. He went to Westchester High School (now Westchester Academy for International Studies) in Houston, Texas, where, according to an article, he was a cheerleader who went by the name of Guy. It was here that Breathed began drawing cartoons and he occasionally submitted them to a local newspaper. He went on to the University of Texas at Austin and became a photographer and writer for the campus newspaper , where he sometimes enhanced photos and made up stories in order to make his contributions more compelling.

in 1978. The strip attracted the editors of the Washington Post who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paralyzed Vietnam war veteran Cutter John. In the beginning, the strip's earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. The strip eventually appeared in over 1200 newspapers around the world until Berkeley retired the daily strip in 1989.

He replaced this strip with the surreal Sunday-only cartoon in 1995, stating that he wanted to terminate the strip while it was still popular. At that time, he said, "A good comic strip is no more eternal than a ripe melon. The ugly truth is that in most cases, comics age less gracefully than their creators."

Eight years later, Breathed began producing the comic strip . He colors the cartoon himself with Adobe Photoshop, claiming that the advances in technology since 1990 have created an opportunity for "something that

In addition to his syndicated cartoon work, which has produced eleven best-selling cartoon collections, he has also produced five children's books, two of which, were made into animated works. Since 1992, he has designed a greeting card and gift ensemble collection for American Greetings, featuring the Bloom County characters Opus, Bill the Cat and Milquetoast the cockroach. Breathed's writing has also been featured in numerous publications including .

Breathed has been a supporter of the animal rights group PETA and illustrated the cover of their "Compassionate Cookbook", as well as T-shirts and other merchandise for them.

In 1986, Berkeley broke his back in an ultralight-plane crash and almost lost his right arm to a boat propeller.

Breathed and his wife, wildlife photographer and psychotherapist, Jody Boyman, and their daughter Sophie live in Southern California. He is reportedly a very private person, and although he has given interviews to on-line magazines such as , he has rarely given face-to-face or telephone interviews and resists talking about himself. He and his wife support animal rights and his book

Berke was nominated for the Squiddy Award for Favorite Political Cartoonist in 1990.