This period became one of rapid expansion in the Funkyverse in other ways as well. There occurred a number of recurring set pieces such as The Guide to Taking Tests, course descriptions from the student curriculum guide, final exams on Shakespeare the Hard Bard, Les’s Record Roundup, the Winning With Wine series, the Winning Tennis series (these last three obviously reflect the author’s interests at that time . . . hey, a guy’s got to have some hobbies, right?), and the How to Win at Basketball series, plus Crazy Harry’s Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes and his Monstrous Limericks. All of this ran alongside stories about Arab sheiks buying the oil rights to the football field, a nuclear power plant blowing up, the school’s computer playing Star Trek and beaming people around the building, Harry L. Dinkle’s The World’s Greatest Band Director’s encounter with Santa Claus, Fred Fairgood running in the Boston Marathon, and the longest story arc yet attempted about a teachers strike, which led to some of the Westview teachers ending up in jail. (This story was based on a teachers strike that took place in Brunswick, Ohio, during which some of the striking teachers were jailed. Among those sent to jail was a teacher who would later become a judge in my home town and who would end up as the presiding judge when I filed my lawsuit to regain the ownership and control of my creations. File that one under small world, and stay tuned for Volume 7 for all the gory details). The Funkyverse was expanding almost exponentially and was threatening to come apart at the seams. And then it did. The crossing over into other universes started quietly at first when in the summer of 1979 the Funkyverse showed up in the Marvel Universe. Jarvis, the butler at the Avengers Mansion, comments on wanting to see what’s new with Funky Winkerbean as he picks up the morning paper in that summer’s X-Men Annual.
From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume Three
