Steve Dallas - Outland and Opus

Outland and Opus

At the end of Outland in 1995, Steve came out of the closet and admitted he was gay. In his final appearance in the comic, he had married a man (Doonesbury's Mark Slackmeyer, in an unlicensed cameo typical of Breathed's work) and was thinking about adopting children.

However, in Opus nine years later, Steve was back to his babe-mongering ways after enrolling in the "Rev. Doogle De-Poofta Program," which used shock therapy to attempt to "cure" homosexuality; in a form of conversion therapy. Steve was depicted as a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a noticeable paunch.

Steve was also reunited with his long-lost son Auggie, and has reluctantly taken on the role of father figure. The child's mother has not been mentioned (though Steve married his girlfriend Kitzi in the final Waltz strip, though this is neither necessarily canon, nor are the Waltz and Bloom County universes one and the same). The August 26, 2007 strip implied that he is romantically involved with the recently re-introduced character Lola Granola. Lola is a former love interest of Opus.