Berkeley Breathed (b. 1957).

Berke Breathed ‘Bloom County’ original comic strip artwork, 30 June 1988, signed and inscribed to Stephen Hawking.

164 x 431mm. Ink, fibre-tip pen, correction fluid and blue pencil on paperboard part-printed with guide- and Washington Post copyright-lines, two textual emendations on pasted-on slips. Protective paper cover pasted onto the blank verso. Provenance: inscribed to Stephen Hawking by Berkeley Breathed: ‘For Stephen Hawking, who is probably somewhat smarter than Gomer Pyle. Best, Berke Breathed’ – the estate of Professor Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking in Bloom County. The comic-strip author Berke Breathed engineered a race to develop the theory of everything between Stephen Hawking and his child-genius character Oliver Wendell Jones – precocious star of The Washington Post’s ‘Bloom County’ strip – that was much to Hawking’s amusement. As Oliver says in the final panel: ‘We scientists always love a little competitive give n’ take’.

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