First all the wacky teens from the original series — Les, Crazy Harry, Lisa, Bull, Cindy, and Funky hizzownself — grew up to be young adults with a multitude of problems. Funky married Cindy, became a drunk, got divorced, joined AA, fell off the wagon, got back on the wagon, etc. Les and Lisa (who got pregnant in high school and gave her baby up for adoption) got married, and then cartoonist Tom Batiuk proceeded to torture and dismember her slowly with cancer over a long period, throwing in a mix-up in hospital records that gave her false hope she had been cured, then a harrowing and realistic depiction of the dying process in a hospice, ending up with Lisa joining Michael Crawford in the afterlife (well, Batiuk’s angel of death DOES look like the Broadway versions of the Phantom of the Opera). At least she got to meet Darin, the baby she gave up in high school, who was now a teen himself. After Lisa died Les went to scatter her ashes in Central Park and got robbed and rolled in the process.

If there’s a character in FUNKY WINKERBEAN who isn’t maimed, crippled, or scarred emotionallu, pyshically, or physically, it’s only because Batiuk hasn’t gotten around to them yet. As Les himself commented as Lisa lay dying, this is supposed to be a COMIC strip.

Now Batiuk has jumped the cast forward a decade, figuring (correctly) that people were pretty much sick and tired of the morbidity. In Sunday’s strip the guy at the rack is the now 50ish Crazy Harry, the guy behind the counter is John, he’s married to Becky, the one armed high school band leader who was maimed in an accident when Wally was driving drunk; Wally subsequently went off to join the army, fight in Afghanistan, come back to marry Becky and knock her up, then returned to the Middle East to disappear, possibly taken hostage, but I claim there’s strong evidence he deserted to become a transvestite pickpocket in Times Square (see above: Les, Central Park, robbed and rolled). The little person with the mustache is Kevin, co-owner of the comic book shop.

John, BTW, has an abusive alcoholic mother (though she hasn’t made an appearance after the 10 year jump, so perhaps it’s “had” at this point).

There is a new generation of teenagers in the high school now and Batiuk, sensing his audience isn’t in the mood for much more tragedy and heartbreak, is playing it a bit lighter, but Funky (now on his 2nd marriage) has turned into an unmitigated workaholic prick and inattentive husband/father, so the strip always has a downer patina hanging over it.