What I found after my first blog about Funky Winkerbean

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog about Funky Winkerbean and how I read the comic through the years. Since then, I found other comic readers. There is a great Twitter group devoted to Funky Winkerbean. I found ten volumes of books on Amazon.

Back in the day, the Funky comic got so big it had spin-offs. The only other spin-off I can think of is that Beetle Bailey is Lois Flagston’s brother. She is the Lois in Hi and Lois. Funky spun off Crankshaft and John Darling. I remember John Darling around 1980. The local paper, The Star Ledger, dropped it after a year to make room for Crankshaft. These were two very different comics. John Darling was a work-life comedy centered on a news reporter. Crankshaft was the school bus driver for years in Funky comics. It appears this is more the artist Tom Batiuk’s forte. I don’t believe The Star Ledger dropped Crankshaft too. 

John Darling ended its run. I had forgot about it for years until I read that it got absorbed in Funky’s comic. Les will play a big part in that storyline. For all the storylines that Les got, they never spun him off to his own comic strip. 

Crankshaft still runs today. I still read them from time to time on the web. gocomics.com is home to a lot of comics. 

While Funky isn’t the giant the Calvin and Hobbes or Far Side, it is a very successful long lasting comic. I love to see what happens next. 

Below is a link to the first post about Funky. I posted it on February 19, 2021

https://mixtapeshistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/funky-wilkerbean-is-as-old-as-i-am-i.html