And In The End – Tom Batiuk on Funky Winkerbean
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What started as the humorous misadventures of the teens from Westview High School eventually morphed into a serialized drama tackling issues such as cancer awareness and teen pregnancy.
After 50 years Tom Batiuk will end his Funky Winkerbean comic strip at the end of this month.
I like to describe it as starting out as a gag-a-day, which is sort of like doing stand-up comedy. And early on it turned into what I refer to as sitcom. There’d be a little situation, say the band director and the football coach wanted to use the football field at the same time. Boom, you’ve got a week of little strips telling that story. That continued on for a fair amount of time. Even well before the 20-year mark, I wrote a story about a girl in high school who was pregnant…
Lisa first opened the door for me, then she disappeared from the strip for a while … She showed up again, opened the door and took me to a new place. And when Lisa comes back into the strip, I’m a young adult and my characters were young adults, because I had done a time jump after the teen pregnancy story…
Ideastream Public Media’s Kabir Bhatia interviews Tom Batiuk.
Bhatia: Explain the decision to draw things down.
Batiuk: Basically, it’s because “Funky” doesn’t have a succession plan. The strip is either going to end in a train wreck, or it’s going to be scripted properly and with a little bow tie. I really wanted to do that because these characters have been so good to me for 50 years. They deserve a proper ending to their story. It wasn’t an easy decision to step away from “Funky,” but it makes a lot of sense…
© Batom, Inc.
Bonus: Tom annotates some recent past was prologue strips.
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