This is the kick-off to a new series I’m calling the Annotated Funky wherein I’ll pick some Funky strips and provide some inside baseball factoids explaining the work’s creation and background and basically anything else pertinent to the work. And I’m going to start off by digging into the sources, call backs and references for the last week of Funky Winkerbean.
First off, it was penciled by the ineffable and acclaimed comic book artist John Byrne. John had worked with me on Funky before, and I asked him to sit-in on the final week because I’m a big fan of his work, and because the science fiction aspects of the final week fell right into John’s wheelhouse. And he delivered in spades.
So to start with, the young girl on the floating recliner and reading an ebook hologram is Lisa, the great granddaughter of Lisa Moore. The solar scooter says Skyler Aero on it – a company named for Skyler Fairgood. The model for the scooter was drawn by artist Phil Holt of Atomik Komix for a young Skyler, and was turned into a clay model by his dad, Lisa’s son, Darin Fairgood.
When Darin and his wife Jessica came into the possession of the gun that killed Jessica’s father, John Darling, she decided to have it melted down and turned it into a toy copy of the Phil Holt drawn solar scooter for their son Skyler. Inspired by the scooter, Skyler went on in the future to form Skyler Aero and manufacture real flying scooters.
And one final note, the number on the solar scooter, X-354, in Funky Winkerbean came from the cover of the first comic book I ever owned, the Mort Meskin drawn Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
