Funky Wilkerbean is as old as I am and I still read it
Funky Wilkerbean is a newspaper comic that is as old as I am literally. The comicstrip started the same year I was born. In the 1970s, it was a daily-timely look at high school. Funky was those joke-a-day strips except every August when Les was trapped on a diving board for a week of strips.
The comic changed in the 1980s when it became more episodic. The band director had to sell band turkeys every November. The odd thing was that Les, the band director, and Crazy, the air guitar champion, became the main players. I wondered if there was a character named Funky. There was. He was rarely used, but he was there.
In the never- really- funny pages of the 1980s, a character named Lisa became a pregnant teen. I never thought I would read that in the papers. That story arc actually had humor in it too. Funky became relevant again. Lisa would give the child up for adoption. In this comic page with Marvin and Garfield was this storyline of teen pregnancy.
I graduated high school in the late 80s and so did Funky and the gang. The creator, Tom Batuik did a time jump where Les graduated his high school and went to college. You find out later that he is actually teaching a class at his old high school.
A new group of teen’s which was most of Funky’s friend’s little brothers and sisters went to Westville. That group didn’t have the same acceptance that Funky’s friends had. I stopped following the comic, partly due to the local newspapers and I didn’t try to find the strip. Reading about high school students is fine when you’re younger than that or even in high school, but once in college, it’s not as interesting. When I found the strip again, years later, a lot of the second class wasn’t there. What happened to Mercedes? The thrust went back to Les, Lisa, and Crazy. Funky showed up from time to time. The character of Lisa had an on and off remission case of cancer. She would later die of the disease.
This is the funny papers?
It’s been over ten years that I followed Funky again. There was another time jump and Funky is a little older than me. The action is seldomly in school. There is the comic book store, the pizzeria, therapy for the war vet. The comic is rarely funny, but I’ve followed this for so long that I just feel connected to it. I hope it continues for many more years.