Tom Batiuk

Thomas Martin Batiuk (born March 14, 1947) is an American comic strip creator, best known for his long-running newspaper strip Funky Winkerbean.

Career Born in Akron, Ohio, Batiuk attended Kent State University, from which he graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, 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 on March 27, 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, ending with the death of the title character, and Crankshaft, which began syndication in 1987. These strips sometimes experience crossovers. Starting in 1986, Funky, and to a lesser extent Crankshaft, sometimes abandoned humor to explore serious, even tragic subject matter. and two students in the strip even did a pro-evolution take-off on Johnny Hart's B.C. Funky Winkerbean has dealt with teen suicide and breast cancer, the latter of which mirrored Batiuk's own wife's diagnosis and treatment.