Opus was originally introduced in June 1981, as a one-time gag about hapless Mike Binkley bringing home what he thought was a German Shepherd, which turned out to be a penguin, much to the disappointment of his father.

Over the years Opus has served as Steve Dallas' legal secretary, journeyed to Antarctica in search of his mother, played the tuba in heavy metal group Deathtöngue (later renamed Billy and the Boingers), wooed (and was nearly married to) an abstract sculptor named Lola Granola, worked as a newspaper personals editor, lifestyle columnist and comic strip writer, had brief, experimental stints employed as a farmer, garbageman and even a cartoonist (or, as he called it, a stripper, which he would also be at one point), and run for vice president on the National Radical Meadow Party ticket, along with his running mate Bill the Cat.

In the tradition of many other popular characters, Opus apparently died (while unwillingly brought along on a balloon expedition to Washington, DC, to zap the ambassador from apartheid-era South Africa with a ray that would temporarily turn him black) only to return with amnesia.

He later regained his memory after being in a state of intense and total shock; he heard an erroneous report that Diane Sawyer (on whom he had an enormous crush) had married Eddie Murphy.

He fled Bloom County, and was absent for a long time, eventually reappearing lost in the desert, before his mother came to him in a hallucination and told him to return to his home.

The new, scandalous memoir, entitled Naked Came I, became a bestseller in the Bloom County universe, leading Opus to even more notoriety than he had as Bill the Cat's running mate.

A major failing of Opus is his inability to resist the temptations of television infotainment commercials, a la Ronco, with the result being that he is frequently seen receiving crateloads of useless and arcane kitchen utensils such as "turnip twaddlers".

Opus also has a very amusing (but somewhat unfortunate) history of "losing parts"; on several occasions, his "fanny" has fallen off (often with a clanking sound on the floor), and he has also had instances where his nose droops or is taken completely off as a result of sneezing while using dental floss and so on.

To date, he has been reunited with four — Bill the Cat, Steve Dallas, and (on June 3, 2007), Michael Binkley and Oliver Wendell Jones.