Match to Flame 245

All of which brings us to the last remaining part of the process to which I alluded earlier—research. From the very beginning of my work on Funky, research for both the drawing and writing had always been a big part of the process. Endless hours would be spent clipping pictures from newspapers and magazines for my morgue file of visual references. My weekly trips back to my old high school covered both sides of that creative coin. I found that being able to stand in the place I’m writing about invariably seemed to ground the work and make the writing richer and more present. If you cheat on that, the work just doesn’t land the same. As I’ve pointed out in these intros before, my high school, Montoni’s, and Les and Lisa’s house became better stages for my work because I knew their real-world premises so intimately. So, whenever I could, I would try to travel to the actual place where my story was set in order to gather pictorial reference and to draw inspiration from being onsite. Once, when visiting Sun Studios in Memphis in advance of a story in Funky in which the little jazz combo from Bedside Manor goes there to record, I saw that two pieces of black tape had been placed in an X on the floor and was told by the guide they were placed there to indicate the exact spot where Elvis Presley had stood when he was first recording there. When I wrote the story, I had one of the characters, a neat freak, pick up the tape and throw it away. Something I could not have written without actually having been there.

So when it was time to go to Hollywood in Funky, I went there in person to conduct my research. The current shopping agreement holder at the time on Crankshaft, Richard Crystal, kindly helped me gain entrée to a classic little Hollywood studio on Las Palmas where, for a morning, I roamed the lot taking pictures and making notes. Back in the day, the studio, according to a small plaque by a door, had been the stage for the I Love Lucy television show, and, as a result, a little eatery there was christened Babalu Cafe. I saw it, I loved it, and I used it in the strip. I even took a picture of the menu so I could have my characters eating what was actually served there (feel free to diagnose). It was the kind of reality with which I like to imbue the strip, and without my being there, that comic strip moment of verisimilitude never would have happened.

From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 15