Match to Flame 230

So, returning to that lunch with the King Features executives, Funky Winkerbean had been around for forty-plus years, and we were gathered to celebrate the signing of a new contract extension as well as the successful promotion and protection of a recent “difficult” story that I had brought in earlier. At one point, Rocky Shepard, the president of King, asked what big new story I had in the works, and this was where I quipped that I truly had nothing planned, adding that my intent going forward was to just write about “Val and Aleta playing with the kids.” My answer was meant as code for the fact that I just planned to slow things down a bit and follow some personal interests in much the same way that Hal Foster had done with Prince Valiant in its later years, when the rattling of swords turned to children playing with rattles as Val and his wife Queen Aleta watched over their young offspring. In truth, the approach to my work had been evolving, and I wasn’t writing Funky the way I used to, and that my glib joking answer wasn’t that far from the truth. I wanted to steer clear of easy crowd-pleasing material, and rather, indulge my own interests and pleasurable sense of storytelling. My approach to my writing was changing in a way that would now permit me to deal with greater degrees of subtlety and complexity.

From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 15