



Shop All Books
View Komix Korner Gallery
Featured Book

The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 2: 1975–1977
Funky, Les, and the gang pun their way through Westview High
Since its debut on March 27, 1972, Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the lives of a group of students from the fictitious Westview High School. This second volume, which presents strips from 1975, 1976, and 1977, sees the comic strip rounding into the form that will carry it into its middle years. With gentle humor and not-so-gentle puns, Les, Funky, Crazy Harry, and the gang comment on life’s little absurdities. Funky begins to ponder why there are cloakrooms in elementary schools when no one wears cloaks. Crazy Harry, firmly ensconced in his locker-as-living-quarters, moves out because his row of lockers has gone condo. Les Moore blossoms as a character and replaces Funky as the leader of the school’s out crowd when he is seen alone on his bicycle at the local drive-in movie. The computer at Westview High becomes sentient and subjects the students to its obsession with Star Trek, including holding Star Trek conventions at the school. Westview’s principal and teachers cope with it all with irony or Zen-like detachment.

The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 7: 1990–1992
Since its debut on March 27, 1972, Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the lives of a group of students from the fictitious Westview High School. In this seventh volume, we see the changes in tone that now characterize Funky Winkerbean. Funky becomes more of a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner. In 1992 Tom Batiuk did something even more radical: he rebooted and restructured the strip, establishing that the characters had graduated from high school. From then on the series progresses in real time.
Tom Batiuk
Creator of Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft
Tom Batiuk was a junior high school art teacher in Elyria, Ohio, when he created a comic panel aimed at teens for the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram. That panel was the precursor to what became Batiuk’s award-winning comic strip Funky Winkerbean.Since its debut on March 27, 1972, Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the lives of a group of students from the fictitious Westview High School. Batiuk has been recognized for his humorous and entertaining portrayals of the students and staff at Westview and acclaimed for his sensitive treatment of social and educational issues.