Berkeley Breathed used to be a member of the ruling class of news- paper comic strip artists – widely read, influential and rich.

In those days, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Michael Jackson still had a big house and a gallon of gasoline cost $1.

When Breathed's "Bloom County" was at its peak, the strip featuring an orphaned penguin named Opus ran in 2,500 newspapers and had a readership of about 70 million. Breathed retired the comic in 1989, after nine years and a Pulitzer Prize. He continued with a new, Sunday-only comic, "Outland," from 1989 to 1995.

Now, he's saying goodbye to his latest once-a-week comic strip, "Opus." Chock full of political and social satire, "Opus" debuted in 2003 and will run in The Bee and some 200 other papers for the final time Sunday.

From the sound of it, Breathed is getting out of the newspaper game for good.

He doesn't think comics are going to survive the long, vexing transition from the paper product to the digital world.

"Newspapers are obviously going to become something else in the next 10 years," Breathed said from his Santa Barbara home. "The comics page as we know it won't make the jump. The door is closing. Everyone on the page has to decide what they're going to do."

Melanie Sill, editor of The Bee, disagrees. "We hear just the opposite from our readers," she said, noting that an online comics poll has been one of the most-visited places at sacbee.com.

Breathed said his decision to end "Opus" came down to demographics. Young people drive the comics business – and they are moving away from newspapers.

"It's happening to music, too. The only music stars that are really universally known now are all 30 years old," Breathed said. "I would say the '90s are the time that it all collapsed for comics and when the rest of us quit – Gary Larson, Bill Watterson ("The Far Side" and "Calvin and Hobbes") and myself all quit. I think we sensed that the audience was drifting away."

Breathed added: "The audiences that have made classic comic strips for a hundred years have been young readers. They're gone. There will never be any more comic strips that are universally known."

Breathed, 51, may be leaving the newspaper business, but he's not retiring. He will continue to produce picture books – "Pete & Pickles" is his latest – and developing them as film projects.

"I needed to tell stories in a more expansive fashion than comics would allow," he said.

In the 1980s, when he produced a comic strip every day, the challenge to keep pace took its toll, he said.

"When you're doing something 24/7 and 365 days a year, the pressure is intense. I only did that for 10 years," he said. "It is exhausting of your daily creative pool. A creative person only has so much output before they start repeating themselves. A comic strip exhausts that very quickly."

Breathed, who began cartooning as a student at the University of Texas, is also deeply involved in animal rights issues and is a supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

His Oct. 12 "Opus" strip promoted a contest in which readers could guess the fate of his famous penguin in the final installment. Breathed will donate $10,000 to an animal shelter selected by the winner.

Asked what he would have done if his comic strip career never took off, Breathed laughed and said, "I think I would have been unemployed most of my life."

Call The Bee's Blair Anthony Robertson, (916) 321-1099.