In the late summer of 1973, I was living in an apartment in Elyria, Ohio and was hard at work on my one year old comic strip Funky Winkerbean. Along with Funky, I was still creating my comic panel Rapping Around for the Tuesday Teen Page in my local paper the Chronicle-Telegram. I had been doing Rapping Around for about three years at that point, and when I first started my work on Funky I cannibalized a number of not-named characters from Rapping Around to populate the cast of Funky. Working on a daily syndicated comic strip is work aplenty, and I had come to the difficult conclusion that it was time for my Tuesday Teen Page panel to end… but not without going out with a bang. So I decide to create, not one, but two special back to school panels for my Teen Page swan song. And I reversed the process by borrowing characters from Funky for my final Rapping Around pieces.
Recently while rummaging around in the attic here at the cartoon castle, I came across those panels again. So here 49 years later are some rare artifacts of Funkyverse lore that I’m presenting today and tomorrow for your edification.
