Funky Winkerbean
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Funky Winkerbean is a comic strip created by high school teacher Tom Batiuk (pronounced "BAT-ick"), which debuted on March 26 1972.
The strip is centered around Westview High School and initially focused on several of its students: Funky Winkerbean, Crazy Harry, Barry Balderman, Bull Bushka, Cindy, Junebug, Leslie P. "Les" Moore, majorette Holly Budd (daughter of Melinda Budd, original majorette for Westview High) and Lisa. The students graduated and now Funky co-owns the local pizza parlor with Tony Montoni, Les teaches English at Westview and is married to Lisa, and Cindy Summers is a newscaster. The strip follows their stories as well as a new generation at Westview, including Wally, Becky, and Monroe. Characters who work at the school include Principal Fred Fairgood, teacher (and future wife of Fairgood) Ann Randall, Coach Jack Stropp (retired), band director Harry L. Dinkle (who refers to himself as The World's Greatest Band Director, and is featured in a running gag whereby every "Battle of the Bands" except the first one occurs during a monsoon), and Cliff the security guard.
Batiuk frequently puts real-life elements into the strip. For instance, there really was a "Montoni's Pizza" restaurant near Kent State University, from which Batiuk graduated in 1969.
In 1992, Batiuk changed the strip's format. It was established that Funky, Les, Cindy, et al. had graduated from Westview in 1988; their college years were skipped, and the storyline moved quickly to 1992. At the same time, the characters started to age with the reader. In fact, Funky married Cindy in 1998; they are now divorced. Les and Lisa married in a Halloween-themed 1996 story which saw them dressed as Batman and Robin.
Funky was originally a purely gag-driven strip, but this also changed after 1992; while the current strip is often humorous, Batiuk has used it to tackle issues such as:
- teen pregnancy (Lisa became pregnant as a teenager, she placed the child for adoption),
- suicide (a student became enamored with Les; when he spurned her interests for Lisa, she attempted suicide, but would later help Les when he fails to obtain his marriage license in time to marry Lisa as the student's father was a judge),
- dyslexia,
- gun violence,
- bullying and child abuse (in the early strip, Bull would constantly torment the very non-athletic Les; in the later strip it was revealed that Bull's father was abusive)
- alcoholism (Funky is a recovering alcoholic), and
- breast cancer (Lisa is a breast cancer survivor, she would later use her law practice to defend a client who was wrongfully fired from her job due to disability. Her cancer has returned in a more serious form in March 2006).
In 2005, Batiuk sent Wally and new wife Becky (who herself has only one arm) to Afghanistan as a part of an anti-landmine effort by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; he nearly dies after stepping on a landmine, and the couple returns with an adopted daughter left orphaned after her family was killed by a suicide bomber.
Two minor characters have been spun off into their own strips: the bus driver Crankshaft in 1987 and the talk show host John Darling in 1979. The latter caused a sensation in 1991 when Batiuk had Darling murdered in the second to last strip. In Funky Winkerbean, Les Moore wrote a book on Darling's murder and solved the case in a 1997 storyline.
Batiuk's neighbor, comic book writer Tony Isabella, occasionally appears in the strip as himself. Another comic book creator, super-hero artist John Byrne, drew ten weeks of the strip while Batiuk was recovering from foot surgery.
Batiuk assisted in the writing of a musical based on the strip, called Funky Winkerbean's Homecoming and set in the era while Funky was still a student at Westview High. This musical is still popular among high school drama groups.
The school is also known for their winless football seasons (the school mascot is the Scapegoats, and their perennial losing led to the coach to having a nightmare in which he was burned at the stake for that reason). However, one series had Westview winning the state championship as a result of every team having to forfeit their game with Westview. The teams forfeited each game beforehand with the exception of Westview's rival, Big Walnut Tech. Tech obliterated Westview in the championship game, but later forfeited due to using an ineligible player.