The second book came up pretty quickly after the first one, and this time it was with Tempo Books. Once again, I went to my colored markers to hand color it – this time to a much more satisfying result. The artistic thing that bothers me the most about this cover is the crooked Funky logo. This logo was designed by me at the strip’s onset and has been the bane of my comic strip existence ever since. The actual logo itself is crooked so trying to fit it into Sunday strips and on book covers has been an ongoing challenge. Although, on closer examination, it looks like Tempo’s printing of the entire piece of cover art was crooked.
The title obviously, or maybe not so obviously anymore, stems from Rick’s ‘Play it again Sam!’ line in Casablanca. I decided that I’d feature my school computer cum washing machine on this cover. At the time, I believe Funky was the only comic strip featuring computers, let alone a computer that would become a sentient character and one who would organize and hold Star Trek conventions at that. Both the computer and the Star Trek theme obviously both stemmed from my long association with reading science fiction. It wouldn’t be the last time that SF themes would appear in the strip.
