The reaction was, as expected, mixed. There were thoughtful op-ed pieces across the spectrum. Many readers decried the very thought of work such as this appearing on the comic’s page. Others lauded their papers for both running the strips and making the suicide prevention guide available. When the dust settled and enough newsprint was expended to make a small forest disappear, seventy-eight of Funky’s papers ran articles on the story (the monitoring service only monitored papers with a circulation of fifty thousand and above, so smaller papers could have run stories they didn’t see) reaching an audience of almost 42 million readers. Four papers, including the Canton Repository and the Buffalo News, refused to run the strips. In the end, however, a majority of editors and readers gave me the space to tell my story and their permission to do work that mattered. With their imprimatur, it meant that, going forward, Funky Winkerbean could be different.
From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 8
