Funky Winkerbean was an American comic strip by Tom Batiuk. Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, it appeared in more than 400 newspapers worldwide.

While Batiuk was a 23-year-old middle school art teacher in Elyria, Ohio, he began drawing cartoons while supervising study hall. In 1970, his characters first appeared as a weekly panel, Rapping Around, on the teenage page of the Elyria Chronicle Telegram. In 1972, Batiuk reworked some of the characters into a daily strip, which he sold to Publishers-Hall Syndicate. Funky Winkerbean ended on December 31, 2022, but many of the strip's characters—including Funky himself—then began to be seen regularly in Batiuk's long-running spin-off strip Crankshaft.

Characters and story

Centered at Westview High School, influenced by Batiuk's alma mater of Midview High School, near Grafton, Ohio, the strip initially focused on several students: Funky Winkerbean, "Crazy" Harry Klinghorn, Barry Balderman, "Bull" Bushka, Cindy Summers, Junebug, Roland Mathews, Livinia Swenson, Leslie P. "Les" Moore, the majorette Holly Budd (daughter of Melinda Budd, original majorette for Westview High), and Lisa Crawford.

From 1972 to 1992, the strip was highly gag-oriented, with humor coming from physical and prop comedy and surreal situations: running gags included the school's computer's having become sentient and subjecting the students to its obsession with Star Trek; "Crazy" Harry's ability to play pizzas like records; the school's winless football team; and the band director's attempts to win each year's "Battle of the Bands," despite that the contest always coincided with a natural hindrance (usually heavy rain).

Although the titular everyman, Funky Winkerbean, was the ostensible main character, the nerds Les Moore and Lisa Crawford became breakout characters and the strip's primary focus. Supporting characters included the obsessive majorette Holly (who never removed her uniform), "Crazy" Harry (who lived in his locker), Jerome T. "Bull" Bushka (the school's star athlete and Les's tormentor), and the popular girl Cindy. Rounding out the cast was the Westview High staff, including Principal Al Burch; the counselor, Fred Fairgood; the secretary, Betty Reynolds (who actually ran the school); the teachers Rita Wrighton, Ann Randall (who would become Fred's wife in 1984) and Ginny Wolfe; the football coach, John "Jack" Stropp; and the band director, Harry L. Dinkle.

The name "Funky Winkerbean" was a composite from suggestions from some of Batiuk's art students.

1992 relaunch (Act II)

In 1992, Batiuk changed the strip's format. It was established that Funky, Les, Cindy and all the rest of the previous cast had graduated from Westview in 1988; their college years were skipped, and the story continued in their adulthood. Subsequently, the characters aged in real time and underwent significant life changes. Funky married Cindy in 1998; they later divorced in 2002. Les and Lisa married in a Halloween-themed 1996 story that saw them dressed as Batman and Robin. Funky now co-owned the local pizza parlor with Tony Montoni, Les taught English at Westview, Crazy Harry was the local mailman, Bull was the Scapegoats' coach, and Cindy a national-level television newscaster. The strip followed their stories as well as those of a new generation at Westview, including Wally, Becky, Darin and Monroe. Overtly whimsical elements were now downplayed, and some of the series' running gags from the 1972–92 years were recast in a more serious light. For instance, Bull's hectoring of Les became the focus of a storyline on domestic violence and child abuse when it was revealed in 1998 that Bull abused Les to cope with being abused by his own father.

Though humorous storylines remained a mainstay, the strip also examined subjects more traditionally associated with soap opera or serialized comics. Most notably, a teenage pregnancy shows a younger Les talking with Summer about death in general to help her understand that of Lisa's, before switching to the new-look Moores in the closing frames, and the first week of strips that followed, following the Moores participating in a Making Strides walk, have a banner saying "Act III: Ten Years Later" in the first frame (an "Act III" statement directing readers to the official website was discreetly included in fine print for some time afterward).

The relaunched Funky, Batiuk said, "is going to be a different strip, a little bit quieter." He also promised that despite Lisa's death, she will remain a presence in strip through flashbacks, remembrances, and a series of videos she recorded for daughter Summer just before she died.

Some time after Lisa's death, Les begins dating Cayla Williams, a black teacher at Westview High. Their relationship blossoms into love and in the fall of 2012, the two were married. Also that fall, Les's daughter, Summer, and Cayla's daughter, Keisha, begin attending college. In April 2013, a storyline began revolving around Darin Fairgood's biological father, Frankie Piece, attempting to meet his biological son; this coincided with the release of Les's book Lisa's Story, detailing her life, battle with breast cancer and events since her death. Frankie, alongside his friend, Lenny Gant, eventually meets with Darin, attempting to blackmail him into doing a reality series about their reunion, but Les, Cayla and the rest of the gang—aware that the show's only objective was to tarnish Lisa's name and character—help Darin thwart Frankie's plans.

In January 2013, Fred Fairgood—now retired as principal of Westview High—suffered a major stroke and was barely alive at the hospital; he is later shown to be recovering at home, although he is disabled. As Fred is beginning his recovery, a woman identifying herself as Kerry Fairgood, Fred's daughter (from a previous relationship, before he married Ann) shows up at the hospital and proves that she is indeed his biological daughter. Ann Fairgood is forced to admit that her marriage to Fred was not the happy one they had made it out to be publicly and that they shielded Darin from their unhappiness.

In 2011, before Fred Fairgood fell ill, another longtime Westview staff member—Jock Strapp, the former football coach and physical education teacher—had died of prostate cancer, although this was acknowledged only briefly.

In 2013 Funky's wife Holly—whose son Cory is in Afghanistan—finds that he has an old "Starbuck Jones" comic book collection and begins collecting missing issues to make the collection complete; she soon has issues #7; #123; #54; #104; #36 (on eBay); #216; and in July 2014 during a week-long cliffhanger searches for the rare and elusive #115. First missing it at a comic book convention and then losing it when her credit card would not work, she finally finds #115, along with an equally rare "Ashcan" version (a penciled version of a comic strip before the final printing). When a couple gives her a "Starbuck Jones" comic book Holly presents them with a "Holy Grail" of Action Comics #243.

During the summer of 2015, the present-day incarnations of the Westview gang meet up with their teen-aged selves during a class reunion; it is revealed in the storyline's finale that Les—who helped organize the event—had passed out during the reunion (for unexplained reasons) and was having a dream.

In 2019, Bull dealt with the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The storyline included Bull's death.

Continuity with other strips

The continuity of the Crankshaft strip is as much as 20 years behind that of Funky Winkerbean; strips in both comics in August and September 2011 show Cayla Williams, a high school teacher and secretary to Principal Nate Green and Les's fiancée, with Keisha her teenage daughter, to be a college-age student in the former. In the January 27, 2015, installment of Funky Winkerbean, a throwback crossover shows Crankshaft as a bus driver, while Crankshaft also has a throwback crossover that shows Crankshaft as a bus driver on Funky Winkerbean. This time difference between the strips was gradually retconned away as Funky Winkerbean finished its run in 2022, with the characters crossing over more frequently through the year in the same timeframe, culminating in the week leading up to Christmas showing characters traveling to and meeting up at a church choir concert in Crankshaft's Centerville.

On January 19, 2015, Funky Winkerbean began a crossover with Dick Tracy when two of the Winkerbean characters decided to attend a police auction of stolen comic books recovered from the Dick Tracy criminal the "Jumbler". Dick Tracy has a concurrent crossover with Funky Winkerbean concerning the comic book auction.

Third time jump (the final week)

Funky and the rest of the cast last appeared on the Christmas Day 2022 episode. The final week was set in the late 21st century. Summer's granddaughter (also named Lisa) found two books in a robot-staffed bookstore; Westview, written by Summer, and Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe, written by Les. It was explained that a mass book burning (referred to as the Burnings) had taken place in the past, but somehow these books survived, and Summer was famous due to the success of Westview. The last episode saw Lisa Jr's mother telling her to retire for the night, and the final panel had both books on Lisa Jr's bed. John Byrne did the art for the final week.

Controversy

The more dramatic turns of the storyline have led to mixed responses from readers. Negative reaction to a 2007 strip featuring Wally getting blown up by an I.E.D. (which turned out in the next strip to be him playing a computer game), included two papers that ran the strip receiving irate phone calls and letters to the editor, and led to Batiuk issuing an apology soon after the strip ran.

A Crankshaft strip from May 23, 2007, sarcastically addresses the controversy from Batiuk's perspective, with a character remarking of newspaper comic strips that "everyone knows they're supposed to be funny".

After the second time skip, Batiuk designed the comic book store around the shop he frequents, Ground Zero Comics and Cards in Strongsville, Ohio. Captain America's shield that is frequently shown in the background is on the mantel in the shop.

In a 2011 interview, Batiuk said that the character Harry L. Dinkle, self-proclaimed as the "World's Greatest Band Director," is modeled after Harry Pfingsten (1935-2021), who taught music at Grafton Junior High when Batiuk was a student there in the late 1950s before becoming the band director at Avon Lake High School from 1964 to 1991. This connection had also been reported in 2006 in the Cleveland Free Times. There had been speculation that Dinkle was also modeled on the director of The Ohio State University Marching Band, specifically Paul Droste and Jon Woods. In 1989, Harry L. Dinkle was the first comic strip character ever to "march" the Tournament of Roses parade. Dinkles, a brand of shoe designed for marching bands, is named after the character and claims to have been endorsed by Dinkle since 1986. Despite the title, Funky is actually a fairly minor character in the play; the focal character of Funky Winkerbean's Homecoming is Les Moore.

The musical was co-written by Andy Clark, who much later appeared as himself in the comic strip in December 2006 and June 2020. Clark is a publisher of the C. L. Barnhouse Company, and has published several Funky Winkerbean collections dedicated to the character of Harry L. Dinkle.

Compilations

  • 486 pp.
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 2 (1975–77), Kent State University Press, 2013
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 3 (1978–80), Kent State University Press, 2014
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 4 (1981–83), Kent State University Press, 2015
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 5 (1984–86), Kent State University Press, 2016
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 6 (1987–89), Kent State University Press, 2017
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 7 (1990–92), Kent State University Press, 2018
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 8 (1993–95), Kent State University Press, 2019
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 9 (1996–98), Kent State University Press, 2020
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 10 (1999–2001), Kent State University Press, 2021
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 11 (2002–2004), Kent State University Press, 2022
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 12 (2005-2007), Black Squirrel Books, 2022
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 13 (2008-2010), Black Squirrel Books, 2024
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 14 (2011-2013), Black Squirrel Books, 2025
  • The Complete Funky Winkerbean: Volume 15 (2014-2016), Black Squirrel Books, 2025

References

  • Official Funky Winkerbean website
  • Funky Winkerbean at King Features
  • Funky Winkerbean at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 16, 2012.