This site has subbed manben eps conveniently organised, last i checked it’s a bit of a mess on youtube.
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I don’t know how common it is, but for instance Jim Lee has been doing semi-regular art streams on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@JimLee/videos and Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/jimlee
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I’m reminded of one of the extra bits in a volume of Gundam The Origin where IIRC the author of Genshiken talked about getting the chance to watch Yas work on the manga and it turned out it was straight ink to paper, no roughs or anything.
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fucking insane. god damn
Aight Funky Winkerbean, a staple of comics pages for 50 years, apparently ended with time travel, a cyberpunk future, and…a book promotion.
Funky Winkerbean is…a weird comic. It started out in the 70’s as a gag a day Teens with Pranks but then at some point in the 90’s became a Comic About Serious Issues before turning into one tragedy after another. This cohost post has a lot more info than I can muster.
There is, naturally, a blog dedicated to this long running comic and they have a post on the last ever strip.
I think for me it’s not every day you see something that runs for…50 years…reach it’s conclusion, whatever that is.
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I hate that I saw that one facial expression in the middle panel of the bottom strip real small on my phone while I’m very drunk and instantly knew it had to be John Byrne, I hadn’t even read the post yet but I recognized John Byrne and I wish I didn’t
Anyway here’s John Byrne in his big chair
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good eye
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Oh wow, at first I thought you just meant Batiuk had done a Byrne swipe for that face, but yeah Byrne straight up drew the last five strips
–Byrne’s signature is on them along with Batiuk’s.
Before that I’d also just remembered that Byrne had drawn the strip for a bit previously; from Wikipedia (which also confirms Byrne drawing this final week): “Another comic book creator, superhero artist John Byrne, drew ten weeks of the strip while Batiuk was recovering from foot surgery and has appeared in the strip himself as a character.”
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Batiuk said he decided to end “Funky Winkerbean” because he had no succession plan. His longtime collaborator Chuck Ayers, the former Beacon Journal editorial cartoonist, wanted to retire from penciling the strip, but agreed to stay four more years to wrap up the 50th anniversary.
Meanwhile, “Crankshaft,” which has a succession plan with artist Dan Davis, will continue as usual.
“I’m just going to go down swinging,” Batiuk said. “We’ll see where everything goes.”
Also some good photos of Batiuk in that article. Not sure I knew Crankshaft is a Funky Winkerbean spin-off:
I sent Ian a few panels of Monsters earlier this year and he immediately went ‘Is that Barry Windsor Smith? Who the hell is inking it?’ Shit’s wild
(Monsters is not very good fwiw. My main takeaway was, ‘I think you should think long and hard about what Nazi sexual assault adds to a story before you go and put it in’)
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Hoping my friends will just put an end to my buffoonery if I ever start openly sharing my early Valiant pencilers tier list, that’s when you’ll know I’m finally too far gone
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“Bartender, cut him off, he’s started graphing out his Sal Buscema appreciation levels again”
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If someone invokes °Sal Buscema° then this kinda thing is gonna have to happen
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No I’m sorry I refuse to believe there’s a real 50-year old comic strip called Funky Winkerbean
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I think a lot about that person whose entire artistic output seemed to be drawings of themself being held tight by the strong, shiny arms of ROM Spaceknight
Wish I was a little more like them
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From that Beacon Journal article:
“I needed a name for the lead character,” Batiuk recalled. “So I went to my art classes, handed out sheets of paper and had the kids write down what they thought was a funny name. I took all those things home and my wife, Cathy, and I sat at our kitchen table in our apartment.
“We went through everything and ‘Funky’ was there and ‘Winkerbean’ was there. And in a brilliant, creative stroke, we called it Funky Winkerbean.”
Initially distributed by Publishers-Hall Syndicate and later King Features Syndicate, it amassed an audience of more than 80 million people.
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The winkerbean is finally funky enough, we can all rest now
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Wow calling your own choice “brilliant, creative” is repellant
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It isn’t when I do it
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all my friends should do this more, but everyone else should do it less
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