Tom Batiuk grew up in Akron, graduated from Kent State University, taught in Elyria and has lived in Medina. He brought his Northeast Ohio roots to the comics pages of newspapers for more than 50 years with “Funky Winkerbean.” The strip debuted in syndication on March 27, 1972, and it will end this December 31.
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. Batiuk will stay busy with his other strip, “Crankshaft,” and his website. The “Winkerbean” characters are already slated to make appearances on both.
Ideastream Public Media’s Kabir Bhatia: Let’s start with the name: explain the origin of “Funky Winkerbean.”
Tom Batiuk: It was about kids in a school, and I needed a name for the main character. So, I went to my art classes at Eastern Heights Junior High in Elyria, and I handed out sheets of paper and said, “Write down what you think is an interesting, funny name.” I took all those home, and my wife, Cathy, and I sat around our kitchen table in our apartment. Somewhere in there, “Funky” came to the surface [and] “Winkerbean” came to the surface. We put [them] together and came up with that name. It's been a curse and a blessing my whole 50 years.
Bhatia: The blessing I understand, but what would the curse be?
Batiuk: Well, as I started getting into work like “Lisa's Story” or teen suicides and things like that, [the name] “Funky Winkerbean” became a little incongruous in that context.
Bhatia: I can imagine. The strip’s first 20 years were humorous and after that it's taken on dramatic elements - like “Lisa's Story” - and the timeline has jumped forward a few times so the characters have progressed from high school to middle age. Those are usually things that it seems like we see in comic books. What made you decide to use those techniques in a syndicated strip?
Batiuk: 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. It just came from my experience [at] my old high school, sitting in the classes. I came home, I would sketch and I was looking at my sketchbook and I saw this girl. And I thought, “Well, if I want Funky to be honest about what I'm talking about, I really should write about everything.” So, I wrote about this girl who became pregnant. The girl was named Lisa. She was Les’ girlfriend at the time, but they hadn't seen each other for a while. When they met up again, she was pregnant and that storyline opened the door for me to a different style.
Bhatia: Lisa was the focus of probably the most well-known and serious arcs, with breast cancer, that grew out of your personal experience.
Batiuk: Lisa first opened the door for me, then she disappeared from the strip for a while. I actually sent her off to live with grandparents in Seattle and kind of forgot about her. 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. So, I was hearing things about breast cancer from family, from friends and also at that period of time there was an awful lot of publicity and information being gotten out about breast cancer. It was kind of in the zeitgeist when the idea came to have Lisa diagnosed with cancer. I sort of started dipping into all that stuff, started doing anecdotal book research and put that all together to create the first part of “Lisa's Story.” And when I was diagnosed a few years later with prostate cancer, I realized that I'd only skimmed over the surface in telling this story. I went back to that internal landscape, and I found a concern that rose to fear, anxiety that rose to anger. The emotions were a lot more intense. So, when I wrote the second part of “Lisa's Story,” I think my experience helped deepen the work.
Bhatia: Do you feel like if you had pitched this strip in 1972, in the form that it has taken for the last 30 years, do you think it would have been picked up? Or were they just looking for, as you said, a gag-a-day at that time?
Batiuk: No, I think it probably wouldn't have been picked up. Very early on, in the first couple of years, I had thrown out the idea of doing a strip of a girl who was pregnant. They turned it down, and I'm glad they did because it needed more work. They were absolutely right, but they wanted me to do something that was a little bit above a gag-a-day strip. They wanted me to dig into slightly deeper things, but I don't think they ever pictured me taking it to where I took it with “Lisa's Story.”
Bhatia: It sounds like, after the first 20 years, the strip has kind of caught up to you in your life, personally, as opposed to before that it was kind of a separate thing. Is that accurate?
Batiuk: It is pretty accurate. When I started “Funky” I was maybe 10 years ahead of the high school students I was seeing and teaching. I made the jumps. And it seems to be that I'm about 10 years ahead of where my characters are, because it takes me 10 years to figure out what just happened to me. So, then I can draw on that. It's been a tremendous gift. It's allowed me to do adult work, and I really am grateful for that.
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. Plus, one of the joys of my life right now is putting together these books for the Kent State University Press. They're bringing out the complete “Funky Winkerbean” and Volume 12 just came out. I'm also told that it just sold out, which is kind of nice. Now I have five more of these books to create by ending “Funky.” I think it would be a very satisfying thing to do.
Bhatia: Talk about some of the things that will stick in your mind, the highlights, whether it's the Rose Bowl parade or controversies with syndicators.
Batiuk: There are a number of things. I was a band geek when I was in high school, in the marching band.
Bhatia: What did you play?
Batiuk: Trombone. I started this character, the band director, which I thought was just for me: Harry L. Dinkle, the world's greatest band director. Turns out there's a lot of guys like that out there. All the teen strips prior to that had written about cheerleaders, football teams, that sort of thing. I was writing about this whole ignored segment of the high school population, a much bigger one actually. That was one of things that stands out for me because the band directors kind of took me to their hearts, and they've been wonderful supporters over the years. They got to go to the Rose Parade and Harry marched.
Then, you mentioned “Lisa's Story,” that was a highlight. And the creation of Ed Crank [and] John Darling. Very few people get to start one comic strip, let alone three, and so that was pretty exciting. So, I think those are probably some of the biggest for me.
Bhatia: Talk about some of the real-life places which have worked their way into the strip, like Luigi's in Akron, and then I think there's a comic book store in Strongsville?
Batiuk: Let's start with Luigi's. A friend of mine, who was in a rock band, we were out one night and it was after midnight. He took me to Luigi's, which at that time was open ‘til 4:00 in the morning. I just fell in love with it. I had already created Montoni's in “Funky,” and I had taken the name from a real pizza place in Kent when I was a student at Kent State. Chuck [Ayers] had come on board in working with me on “Funky.” And we were meeting at Luigi’s, and I just started [visually] stealing the place, bit by bit. The Tiffany lamp was the first thing we took, and we basically took everything but the nails on the floor. I have to say the folks at Luigi's were absolutely wonderful. There's two memorable events that will always stand out for me. The first was the launch of “Lisa's Story.” We did it at Luigi's and it was absolutely like being a Beatle for a day. I don't think there'll ever be a book launch as cool as that.
And then for my 40th wedding anniversary, they were closed on Sundays at that point in the afternoon. They let me have the place and we celebrated our anniversary there.
The other place you mentioned, Ground Zero, has become the Komix Korner in “Funky.” That just started because I became interested in the history of comics. Why do we do these things? What made comic books popular in the first place? What made comic strips popular? Komix Korner was based on another place in Kent called Kent Kozy Korner - and they spelled it with three K's. Very bizarre. It was the only place in town, when I was a freshman, that I could find comics. Don't tell the people at the university about this, but while I was a student at Kent I was also being homeschooled by [Marvel founder] Stan Lee at the Kent Kozy Korner.
Bhatia: You mentioned being home-schooled by Stan Lee. What were the things that influenced you? Was it comics, or were there comedy albums, since obviously there was a lot of humor in your work during those first two decades?
Batiuk: Well, my Dad would read me the comics. He had to read me “Prince Valiant” and “Flash Gordon,” because I was too young. But I saw something powerful happening there, and so that was my first attraction. And then one day I walked into a Rexall drugstore and found a copy of “Flash” #115, and it totally rearranged my molecules. I just wanted to do comic books after that, and that became my love. I never thought of doing humor at the time, but the things you mentioned - the music we listened to, the shows my Dad watched, the kind of books he read - all influenced my humor.
Once I left Kent, my first thing was to pursue comic book work. I flew to New York and tried to get a job at DC Comics or Marvel Comics. They both turned me down and rightfully so. I think my portfolio was probably filled more with nerve than anything else. I came back home and decided to take a chance and see if I could get to do some artwork for a local paper. I went into the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and talked to an editor, Jim Dauble. He looked at my sketch book, and he said, “We have a thing called the Tuesday Teen Page. Would you like to do a one-panel cartoon for it once a week?” I said “absolutely.” I'm eternally grateful for them. It was a great learning experience. I had to learn writing on-the-fly. I would really overwrite: I'd go in with about a dozen comics for the next week, and it was a great learning experience.
Bhatia: You get to say whatever you'd like, every day, through the strip. Anything you'd want to impart to your audience and fans after 50 years?
Batiuk: Just to thank my readers for coming along on this journey. Without their support, this wouldn't have happened.
