The most popular penguin on the Sunday Comic pages is about to retire, while his creator, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, moves on to other projects.

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Opus has been a part of Breathed's creative world for three decades, but the cartoonist says his original choice of a penguin as a featured character was driven by some quite practical considerations.

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What will happen to Opus when his days in the comics come to an end? Readers are invited to guess in a nationwide contest that ends TONIGHT.

Berkeley Breathed is a screenwriter, author, cartoonist, and one of America's most popular illustrators. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning in 1987, Breathed is perhaps best known for his comic strip Bloom County, which ran for nine years and appeared in over 1,200 newspapers all over the world. Now that he is moving into other realms of more collaborative endeavors, Breathed is bracing for the loss of autonomy he enjoyed as a cartoonist.

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To find out more about his new children's book Pete and Pickles, click here .

Berkely Breathed will make a rare Northern California public appearance Oct. 18 at the Charles M. Schulz museum in Santa Rosa. Get details here .