I returned home from my visit to Marvel Comic fully intending to take Roy Thomas up on his offer to go back to Marvel with new material, but along the way my focus became somewhat diffused. That fall of 1969 I took a job teaching art at Eastern Heights Junior High in Elyria. I’d get home each day and work on material for Marvel, but I also began work on newspaper comic strip submissions and some on-spec spot art for the local paper. At one point I even considered getting part-time work with a local ad agency as a means of gaining some professional experience. My scattergun approach wasn’t producing any results, and the ad agency idea was about to send me off in a direction that I knew deep down wasn’t the right one. In short, I was at a crossroads.
*From the introduction to The Complete Funky Winkerbean Vol. One
