I'm not sure how good my source for this is. I just read about it at http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008002 John Byrne is allegedly ghosting the "Funky Winkerbean" strip! Now, I only read comic strips online these days and the most recent "Funky" is the March 22nd one. Byrne has supposedly taken over the strip within the last week, so I haven't seen any of the alleged John Byrne "Funky"s. Has anyone seen it? Is there a difference in art style? Does anyone know if it true that Byrne has taken over "Funky"?
Great. Now he'll probably want to rewrite the origin of Funky.
Man! I think I've just read the first John Byrne "Funky" strip. That's a helluva difference in artstyle! At any rate, the one character shown in the strip looks very different.
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/fwinker/about.htm
Yeah, I was gonna mention that earlier today and it completely slipped my mind. But notice how it's still signed "Tom Batiuk."
Well, if you read this article, http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/5603622.htm
you'll find that Batiuk hasn't drawn the strip in quite awhile. He only inks it. The regular artist is Chuck Ayers. Ayers is also the artist for "Crankshaft".
Many comic strips, btw, are ghosted, but signed by the original creator of the strip. "Hagar the Horrible", for one, was written and drawn by Dik Browne's sons for years before Dik died. And Hank Ketchum, IIRC, was only doing the Sunday "Dennis the Menace" as early as the mid-Eighties. That's according to an interview I read in Comics Scene way back in the 80s.
Definitely looks Byrne-esque, particularly the redhead in the March 31st strip.
Odd that he isn't getting credit if he's drawing it, but then IIRC he was known for years as Company Man at Marvel so maybe he's slipped back into that identity?
As for Ketchum he retired in the 90's, but his signature is still on the Dennis The Menace panels.
And ghosting has been going on for a long time in comic strips. Early comic artists realized that it was tough producing daily art so they hired Assistants to help them out. After a while the Assistant was doing all the work while the Artist collected the money.
Frank Frazetta was an assistant of Al Capp on Li'l Abner for awhile.
I think Al Capp started as an assistant on Joe Palooka.
Mike Grell was an assistant for Dale Messick on Brenda Starr in the '60s or early '70s. He drew everything but the faces. Messick would still do that.
Usually however Assistants are young artists starting out. Byrne must really need the money.
Yeah, the redhead in the March 31st does look Byrnesque. Especially in the second panel.
"As for Ketchum he retired in the 90's, but his signature is still on the Dennis The Menace panels."
Hank Ketchum did a little more than just retire, KAM. He died in the Nineties. According to the interview I read in the Eighties, he had stopped doing the daily "Dennis" and was only doing the Sunday strip.
I read that he was only doing the dailies & that from the '80s on his assistants were doing the Sundays.
According to 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics (1996) most of the Dennis art during the '80s was by Karen Donovan & Ron Ferdinand & that in the '90s Ferdinand alone did the Sundays. Marcus Hamilton assisted Ketchum on the dailes. (It also said the unsigned panels were Hamilton's work.)
That could be KAM. It's been some 20 years since I read that Comics Scene interview and I no longer own a copy of it. I may either have misread the article or I am misremembering what I read.
Okay, I was wrong. I'm not sure when Ketchum's signature was dropped, but looking at this morning's Dennis The Menace I realized that the sig read Hamilton, not Ketchum. (Check first, post second. D'oh!)
So what happened to Batiuk? How come he's not doing the strip anymore? Did he just get tired of it after thirty years?
Well, if you go back and read the article I linked on April 13th:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/5603622.htm
I believe you'll find that Tom Batiuk is still writing the strip. However, as is a common practice in the comic strip industry, the art has been ghosted for years. It's just that John Byrne's art style is so radically different from Batiuk's or the person who has been ghosting Batiuk's style (Chuck Ayers'), that it's pretty blatant that there is a new artist on it.
Frankly, I'd be surprised to learn that such strips as "Dilbert" or "Garfield" are even being drawn by their creators.
Garfield I can believe, but Dilbert? Why hire artists who draw just as badly as you do?
The bad thing is, that there would be people who'd want that job. I picked those two strips because they are so immensely popular. Personally, I don't like either. I gave "Dilbert" a chance when it first appeared and it simply wasn't something I enjoyed. The same holds true for "Garfield". Maybe it's because I'm not a cat person.
There are some comics that probably haven't been ghosted. I'm reasonably certain that Sparky never used a ghost on "Peanuts". For one thing there's those shaking lines that Schulz had near the end. Plus, for the last few years, even if no new concepts were being introduced, Schulz was experimenting with panel design. Some strips were one panel gags, some were horizontal. Obviously, Schulz wasn't doing the experimentation that Bill Watterson was doing, but it was evident that he was trying new things. Plus, if it were ghosted, you'd think that new strips would still be produced. "Peanuts" was too much a reflection of who Mr. Charles M. Schulz was. No one could duplicate that.
Another strip I don't think is ghosted is "Beetle Bailey". I haven't read it in years, but when I did, I noticed that things about the characters would change. Not anything major mind you, but there were changes. Now it's true that doesn't mean that Mort Walker had to be the one behind the changes, but from what I've read, Addison "Mort" Walker is a very hands on person.
"B.C." is also probably not ghosted. I base this on the religiosity of the strip. It's a reflection of Johnny Hart's convictions. (Y'know, I just blanked out on what his name was. It took me a moment to remember.)
Oh wow. Influenced by the current run of "Funky" that I'm reading online, I looked on eBay and found this
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2170994782&category=3983
Boy does that bring back some childhood memories. It'd be tres cool to own one.
Garfield I can believe, but Dilbert? Why hire artists who draw just as badly as you do?
Just for the record - according to what I've read, Garfield is definitely ghost-drawn, but Dilbert is (to paraphrase Benn) 'very much a reflection of who Scott Adams is' and has never been and likely will never be handed over to anyone else.
That said, I think I like who Charles Schulz was better than who Scott Adams is. Just IMHO, but in recent strips he's gone from social criticism to just plain misanthropy - this 'In-duh-vidual' stuff, for instance.
Today's strip has a shout out to the Byrne switchover. Hopefully it wasn't Byrne's idea...
And you know, what's funny is that Wonder Woman is just not the comic I most associate John Byrne with. Uncanny X-Men is. But, given the bad feelings Byrne has towards those currently in charge of Marvel Comics, I doubt he'd plug them.
"Hopefully it wasn't Byrne's idea..." - Sparrow47
IIRC, Tom Batiuk is still the writer of the strip, so I suspect it may be his idea.
Well. After do a number of strips that pay homage to DC Comics, today's "Funky Winkerbean"* http://est.rbma.com/content/Funky_Winkerbean?date=20030518 pays tribute to Marvel. Specifically, John Byrne makes a reference to the series that made him famous The X-Men. In the last panel is an X-Men poster featuring Cyclops.
*It's actually the May 18th, 2003 strip.
I almost didn't notice, when I read the Monday, June 16th's "Funky", but it looks like John Byrne is no longer the artist on the strip. It looks like the work of Tom Batiuk and his regular artist.
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/fwinker/about.htm
Today's strip featured a photograph of Funky from his high school days standing next to a sign that reads "Seniors '88". Since Funky began high school in 1972, he must have been held back a lot!
In today's strip, Les has a nightmare where he is in school and suddenly near the end of the semester, he learns that he was enrolled in an algebra class that he forgot about and hasn't attended all semester! I thought this funny, because I've had pretty much the same recurrent nightmare throughout my adult life.
Wow. It seems that a copy of the first FW collection (which I have a good copy of) is now going for $200 minimum on the online market. I first paid 50 cents for mine in a used bookstore about 1990.
Didn't Batiuk, or whoever does the strip, jump ahead 15 years at some point? Les is a bit balder and has a goattee.
I remember back in 1979, there were a lot of references to Star Trek - The Motion Picture.
About 8 years ago, he started with the "next generation". Les and Bull are now teachers at Westview.
Reading over Tom Batiuk's blogs, it seems that last October, Batiuk jumped the strip's timeline 10 years. (Look for the 10.20.2007 entry.)
There were Star Trek references from the very earliest Funky strips, circa 1972. The school computer would refuse to cooperate with the Principal unless the principal wore a Starfleet uniform and pointed ears and talked in Starfleet protocol.