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Funky Winkerbean and creator graying together, giving cartoonist grown-up stories
• MEDINA, Ohio (AP) -- Like two aging baby boomers, "Funky Winkerbean" and creator Tom Batiuk have turned gray and have experienced their share of life's ups and downs in a 40-year run on the funny pages.
• Batiuk, 65, has morphed his characters over the years from mop-headed beatniks to graying 60-somethings, much like the changes for Batiuk, his hair over his collar in the 1970s but now graying and cut short.
• The story lines have changed, too, from high school hijinks and awkward teen dating moments in the early years to dealing with more adult issues like alcoholism, suicide and fighting cancer. His latest hot topic story line during May: two boys who want to go to the high school prom together.
• The strip debuted in more than 70 papers on March 27, 1972, and has grown to about 400. The first strip introduced the high school-age characters, including Funky ("I'm just an average kid") and Les ("I really want to be far out like Roland") and issues important to teens, including meeting a girl, getting a date and dealing with acne.
• To Batiuk, delving back into the high school years with the gay prom issue underscores the generational changes and contemporary challenges his characters faced once he decided to let them begin aging along with Batiuk and the rest of us.
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Romney clinches GOP presidential nomination, but Trump overshadows
• LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Mitt Romney has won the Republican presidential nomination after years of fighting, though his triumph was partially overshadowed by the celebrity businessman who helped him along the way.
• As primary voters in Texas on Tuesday pushed him past the 1,144-delegate threshold he needed to win the nod, Romney was raising money in Las Vegas with Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who has stoked doubts about whether President Barack Obama was born in America.
• It's the start of a weeklong push to raise millions of dollars during a West Coast swing as Romney looks to bring in as much cash as possible ahead of a ramped-up campaign schedule later this summer.
• "Mr. Trump, thank you for letting us come to this beautiful hotel and being with so (Continued on page 29)
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