Berkeley Breathed is pulling the plug on his comic “Opus” after Nov. 2 and on his career as a comic strip artist. The 5-year-old Sunday comic with a political bent, which appears in the Journal-World, stars the penguin from Breathed’s classic comic “Bloom County.” It is ending just before the presidential election.

In an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times, Breathed, 51, wrote Monday: “30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.”

Breathed also writes screenplays, novels and children’s books.

“Opus” will end with an online contest asking readers to guess the fate of the penguin.