Second Time Jump
On October 21, 2007, Funky Winkerbean underwent its second "time warp," this time jumping ahead to a point ten years following Lisa's death and aging the cast of characters accordingly; those that were children are now high school age, and the original cast are in their mid-forties. Readers got a preview of the new-look feature starting with the October 5 strip in which a middle-aged Les talks to an unseen psychologist about events that immediately followed Lisa's passing, which are then depicted in flashback form. The strip on the 21st showed a younger Les talking with Summer about death in general to help her understand that of Lisa's, before switching to the new-look Moores in the closing frames, and the first week of strips that followed, following the Moores participating in a Making Strides walk, had a banner saying "Act III: Ten Years Later" in the first frame (an "Act III" statement directing readers to the official website would be discreetly included in fine print for some time afterwards).
The relaunched Funky, Batiuk claimed, "is going to be a different strip, a little bit quieter." He also promised that despite Lisa's death, she will remain a presence in strip through flashbacks, remembrances, and a series of videos she recorded for daughter Summer just before she died. Montoni's will have opened several locations, including in New York City, Summer will have grown into a popular 15-year-old basketball star (in contrast to her geeky father), and Bull's adopted daughter Jinx, as well as Becky's adopted daughter Rana, are high-school aged. Batiuk explained that he wanted the comic to move so far ahead in order to prevent it from being an extended grieving process, to ensure that the next generation of students he followed were related to the original cast of characters, and that he wanted to bring the ages of his original characters closer to that of his current target audience. After the flash forward, all of the strip's prominent adult male characters–Funky, Les, Bull and Crazy Harry–are 46 years old.
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