WHEN REALITY BITES, `FUNKY' REFLECTS DISTURBING TRENDS.Byline: Michael Precker Dallas Morning News They call it the funny pages, but Tom Batiuk Tom Batiuk (born 1947 in Akron, Ohio) is an American comic strip creator. His best-known comic strip is Funky Winkerbean. Batiuk attended Kent State University, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in painting. often has other ideas. Sure, the artist and author of ``Funky Winkerbean'' wants you to chuckle. But he also wants you to think and be challenged, and, most of all, become enmeshed en·mesh also im·mesh tr.v. en·meshed, en·mesh·ing, en·mesh·es To entangle, involve, or catch in or as if in a mesh. See Synonyms at catch. in characters and a story that will bring you back tomorrow. So Batiuk, who has been drawing ``Funky'' for nearly a quarter-century, deals with high school life, and it's not always pretty: teen pregnancy, guns in the classroom, even suicide. ``There used to be comics that covered the depth and breadth of human experience, not just a gag-a-day scenario,'' he says. ``The type of thing Lynn Johnston Lynn Johnston (born May 28, 1947) is a Canadian cartoonist, well known for her comic strip For Better or For Worse, and was the first female cartoonist to win the Reuben Award. (whose `For Better or for Worse' killed off a beloved dog last year) does and I do is expand the palette and try to touch on other things. ``I'm not leaving humor behind. I'm just trying to expand on it.'' On the phone from his home in the northeastern Ohio town of Medina, Batiuk is discussing the subject because this week's strips push the comic envelope a bit further than before, with even more relevance than he had intended. ``I guess you can tell people to quit reading now if they don't want to know what's going to happen,'' he jokes. Consider yourselves warned. The four-week series starts with strip regulars Tony Montoni and Les Moore listening to an inflammatory talk-radio show in Montoni's pizza parlor. Their discussion of whether hate-filled rhetoric leads to action is interrupted by a - we'll use the comic-strip special effects special effects, in motion pictures, cinematographic techniques that create illusions in the audience's minds as well as the illusions created using these techniques. here - BOOM! It's the post office, presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. a terrorist target, and Les' fiancee, Lisa, is inside. They've had a pretty uneventful engagement, Batiuk says, which got him thinking, ``What can I do to keep reader interest? I always want to walk up to cliches and turn them on their head. What can I do to derail de·rail intr. & tr.v. de·railed, de·rail·ing, de·rails 1. To run or cause to run off the rails. 2. this?'' Last year's bombing in Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (1990 pop. 444,719), state capital, and seat of Oklahoma co., central Okla., on the North Canadian River; inc. 1890. The state's largest city, it is an important livestock market, a wholesale, distribution, industrial, and financial center, and a farm provided a peg. ``I thought, this can happen to anybody,'' he says. ``I wanted to look at something which unfortunately is becoming a fabric of our society.'' The explosion early Saturday that disrupted the Atlanta Olympics made the comic strip comic strip, combination of cartoon with a story line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters, whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of "balloons" containing written speech. more timely. ``People don't always have a perception of how far in advance you work,'' he says. ``I actually held these strips for some time to put some air between them and Oklahoma City.'' Instead, the ``Funky Winkerbean'' drama will play out in the comics as the Centennial Park Centennial Park can mean:
``Obviously, you're trying to be timely, but there's no satisfaction getting caught in the middle of a tragic situation,'' he says. ``I would much rather see the thing contained in my comic strip and nowhere else.'' Batiuk says he hasn't heard of any newspapers that objected to the story line, either before or after the Atlanta bombing. ``I would really like `Funky' to be sort of a blend,'' the cartoonist says. ``It's still humor, but it's real life. After all these years, I think the readers cut some room for you to do some different things, and I think it makes the strip better.'' If you're worried about Les and Lisa and their engagement, Batiuk is ready to spill a few beans, but only if you want to know. Stop here if you don't. Ah, we knew you'd want to peek ahead. Look for a happy occasion around Halloween. It should be touching, life-affirming, all that - and a little goofy Goofy bumbling, awkward dog; originally named Dippy Dawg. [Comics: “Mickey Mouse” in Horn, 492] See : Awkwardness . This is, after all, the comics. CAPTION(S): Photo PHOTO Tom Batiuk ``Funky Winkerbean'' cartoonist |
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