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.
Throughout its 50-year run, the strip went through several format changes. For the first 20 years of its run, the characters did not age, and the strip was nominally episodic as opposed to a serial, with humor derived from visual gags and the eccentricity of the characters. In 1992, Batiuk rebooted the strip, establishing that the characters had graduated from high school in 1988 (although later strips showed them graduating in 1972), and the series began progressing in real time. In 2007, a second "time warp" occurred, this time taking the strip ten years into the future, ostensibly to 2017, although the events of the strip still reflected a then-contemporary setting. Following the 1992 reboot and especially after the 2007 time jump, the strip was recast as a serialized drama, though most strips still featured some humor, often based on wordplay. The more drama-oriented Funky Winkerbean featured story arcs revolving around such topics as terminal cancer, adoption, prisoners of war, drug abuse, post-traumatic stress, same-sex couples attending the senior prom, and interracial marriage.
On November 17, 2022, Batiuk announced that he would be retiring the strip at the end of the year. 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 sentient computer's 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 the fact 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. The Funky and Les characters are based on former roommates of Batiuk.
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 storyline had Lisa becoming pregnant as a teenager; she placed the child for adoption. Her child, Darin, grew up with his adopted family and became a regular character. Other storylines dealt with suicide, teen dating violence, capital punishment, alcoholism (Funky himself struggled with alcoholism and recovery), and other grim subjects.
Perhaps the most widely discussed storylines involved characters who went through catastrophic suffering. In 2005, Batiuk sent newlyweds Wally Winkerbean and Becky to Afghanistan as a part of an anti-landmine effort by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; Wally nearly died after stepping on a mine. He was saved when his Afghan companion Kahn managed to knock the mine away, only to be punched out for selling the Stinger that killed his fellow troops. The couple returned to the US with an adopted daughter, Rana, who was left orphaned after her family was killed by a suicide bomber.
Even more attention was focused on the ongoing suffering and eventual death of Lisa Crawford Moore.
Lisa's story
A recurring storyline for many years was Lisa Moore's battle with breast cancer. She first dealt with it when diagnosed in 1999. Soon after, she learned that Holly Budd was also a breast cancer survivor. After going through chemotherapy and a mastectomy, Lisa's cancer went into remission.
In March 2006, Lisa's cancer returned in a more serious form. Following another round of chemotherapy, her cancer appeared to go into remission again in early 2007, but on May 9, 2007, her doctor revealed that her medical charts had gotten mixed up and her disease was not only progressing, but had become inoperable. In a King Features press release, it was revealed that "Lisa will start chemo again, learn that her long-range prospects are poor, stop chemotherapy, deal with telling her daughter about her cancer situation, [and] testify before Congress about the need for cancer research and cope with friends and family." Batiuk was very open about the fact that Lisa's latest ordeal would end with her death and some of the events that would happen as a result.
The series polarized the comics community, with Batiuk being both praised for dealing with the topic and criticized for his graphic depiction of Lisa's slow deterioration and ultimate death. The entire storyline, which culminated with Lisa's death in the October 4, 2007, strip (excerpt at right), was collected and published in a book, Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe. This book, which includes the strips from Lisa's initial battle with cancer (which had itself been collected in book form in 2004), was published before the series had finished running in syndication. In 2007, Batiuk discussed his reasoning for pursuing the plotline, saying that he was inspired by his own battle against prostate cancer.
Second time jump (Act III)
On October 21, 2007, Funky Winkerbean underwent its second "time warp," this time jumping 10 years ahead from Lisa's death and aging the cast of characters accordingly; those that were children are now high school age, and the original cast are in their mid-forties. Readers got a preview of the new-look feature starting with the October 5 strip in which a middle-aged widower Les talks to an unseen psychologist about events that immediately followed Lisa's passing, which are then depicted in flashback form. The October 21 strip 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. Montoni's will have opened several locations, including in New York City, Summer will have grown into a popular 15-year-old basketball star (in contrast to her geeky father), and Bull's adopted daughter Jinx, as well as Becky's adopted daughter Rana, are high-school aged. Batiuk explained that he wanted the comic to move so far ahead in order to prevent it from being an extended grieving process, to ensure that the next generation of students he followed were related to the original cast of characters, and to bring his original characters' ages closer to his target audience's. After the flash forward, all the strip's prominent adult male characters—Funky, Les, Bull and Crazy Harry—are 46 years old.
Major storylines While a few of the mainstay elements—most notably, storylines revolving around the Westview High School band and now-retired director Harry Dinkle, and classroom spot gags—reappear in Act III on occasion, the focus once again is on dramatic storylines with continuing story arcs:
Return of Wally Winkerbean Wally Winkerbean—who had returned to Iraq before the relaunch—is not in the core cast as shown on the Funky Winkerbean website, and it was also revealed that Becky had remarried (John Howard, owner of the Comics Emporium) sometime in the 10 years after Lisa's death. For nearly two years after the relaunch, Wally's fate remained unknown, although early on, Batiuk wrote on his blog that what happened to Wally "may not be what you think happened." Batiuk also revealed that a "clue" to Wally's fate could be found in the October 11 strip, which features Les getting mugged in New York after Lisa's death after walking past a newspaper vending machine with a headline saying "Soldiers Taken Hostage."