Book contains a large collection of Harry L. Dinkle comic strips from the Funky Winkerbean Comic Strip by Tom Batiuk. This book is the first book in the series and contains many of the earliest strips!
A hilarious book collection of comic strips featuring Harry L. Dinkle, his "Westview High School Scapegoat Marching Band" and all of the other characters from nationally syndicated cartoonist Tom Batiuk's popular Funky Winkerbean comic strip. Tom's witty sense of humor is experienced daily in over 400 newspapers across the nation as millions of people get a glimpse of the wacky life of "The World's Greatest Band Director".
Tom Batiuk 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. He went on to teach art in junior high school. He put his experiences to use in his gag-a-day Funky Winkerbean, which first appeared in print in 1972. With the success of the strip, he abandoned his teaching career, occasionally returning to the classroom to refresh his sources. He authored two spinoff strips, John Darling, which ran from 1979 through 1990, and Crankshaft, which began syndication in 1987. These strips sometimes experience crossovers.
Over the years, Batiuk's strips have taken on an increasing narrative continuity. Starting in 1986, Funky, and to a lesser extent Crankshaft, sometimes abandoned humor to explore serious, even tragic subject matter.
His stories often involve strong drama elements combined with generally rosy outcomes. They also show a strong belief in God, as well as sympathies for the American military. On the other hand, Funky Winkerbean dealt very critically with Intelligent Design, and two students in the strip even did a pro-evolution take-off on Johnny Hart's BC.