The Winkerbean Controversy

Back when I was in middle school, I was in the band. Yes, the band. Out music teacher had posters on the wall from the comic strip Funky Winkerbean. Back in the day, it was a light comic about a bunch of high school students and their nutty band director. Written and drawn by Tom Batiuk, it wasn't long until the comic turned dramatic (like For Better or For Worse) and started causing controversy. I never really got too much into it as a kid, being much more interested in Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield.

I remember one Sunday in particular where there on the front page of the funny papers was one huge full color panel of a girl attempting suicide.

Batiuk continued to stretch the boundaries of comic strips in 1995, when he created a special series in which Susan Smith, an A-plus student at Westview High, discovers that her love for teacher Les Moore is unrequited. Despondent, Susan attempts suicide. The series generated tons of mail, including this comment from a New Jersey reader: "You did an extraordinary job of leveraging characters and creating a story line so compelling that (while traveling) I'd call ahead to ensure the availability of a newspaper that featured Funky Winkerbean."

It wasn't gory or anything, just a teenage girl laying across her bed with a bottle of pills in her hand. In the background, her parents (or maybe her teacher, I can't remember) wear shocked expressions as they enter the room. I even remember it was on the news, people were so upset.

I don't really blame them on that. I mean, I was 15 at the time and a big fan of comics. In our paper, the Plain Dealer, Funky Winkerbean was the very first comic at the very top of the page. The first one you see. Calvin and Hobbes had ended by this point, and Funky took it's slot in the Sunday funnies. And come on, little kids read the Sunday paper. Who wants to have that conversation with a ten year old?

Anyhow, the comic continues to create controversy. The above comic appeared on 02.23.07. The comic below? The next day.

I'll thank him for not putting it in the Sunday paper this time. Again, people are getting upset. Again, I understand. Another cheap shock from Tom, but the thing about cheap shocks is they work. They do make you stop and think.

In the teen suicide storyline, yes, we were shocked. Parents were forced to have an uncomfortable conversation with their kids, but they talked about the difficult subject of suicide. They might have never had that conversation otherwise and, while I still think it was in bad taste, it did what it was supposed to do. It opened that dialog up. It probably saved lives. I was suicidal as a teen, and while this comic didn't save my life exactly, it's image has always stayed with me.

This comic does the same thing. It makes you ask yourself why you're getting upset by a drawing of a fictional character getting asploded, but you so easily ignore it happening every day in the real world?

Said Tom in a statement:

I wanted to let you know that I’m sorry for any concern, anger or confusion that today’s Funky Winkerbean strip may have caused with your readers. Obviously, any strip removed from the context of it’s (sic) surrounding story is open to misinterpretation, and such appears to be the case here. It was most certainly wasn’t intended to disparage our soldiers in any way.

To the contrary, anyone following the Iraq story arcs in Funky, knows that I’m not only sympathetic to what our soldiers are facing in Iraq, but the focus throughout has been on the sacrifices they make in being separated from family and in the dangers they face in the theater. Treating them with disrespect is not something I would ever do…