An Extremely Abridged Funky Winkerbean Retrospective
Today, December 31st, 2022, is the end of 50 years of newspaper comic Funky Winkerbean. Here it is.
This is a real wet fart of an ending, but to see why, we have to take a very bumpy and buck-wild trip back in time. Please, join me.
content warnings: This is gonna touch on a lot of stuff that's been hot-button issues for the last 30 years. I don't think I go into enough detail to be triggering, but there are gonna be mentions of domestic abuse, cancer, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and so on.
You mean to tell me this shitpost of a chost is genuine? That there's an actual comic named "Funky Winkerbean"? That, despite never having seen it in the Sunday Edition the 27 years I've been on this earth, I'm to believe it was syndicated in newspapers?
That this creation, which feels like something not of this reality, as if plucked from an alternate reality next door and placed within our own for laughs, is a genuine product of this world?
That a reoccurring background character with the name of a famous motorbike company is a Janitor? And kicks off some batshit insane final arc?
Surely you jest.
Surely you jest… right?
Please tell me this is a joke.Oh, Funky Winkerbean is not only all too real, but it ran in over 400 newspapers, especially in its home state of Ohio, where it's set (and we get frequent references to Ohio landmarks like Luigi's Montoni's Pizza).
There's even a flashback during the final arc where Timemop, as the fans call him, arrives in the past, sees a motorcycle, and goes "Yeah, you know what, that's a good name. I'm gonna go by Harley Davidson while I'm here." I would never lie about Funky Winkerbean. The truth is so much funnier.

