'FUNKY WINKERBEAN' TACKLES BREAST CANCER STORY WITH HEART.

Byline: MICHELLE J. MILLS

LA.COM 

Some comic section readers have followed the characters in Tom Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean," especially the story of Lisa Moore. Lisa survived teen pregnancy and, later, beat breast cancer. But in recent months, her cancer returned. She decided against chemotherapy to let nature take its course. In this case, it is death.

Batiuk's book, "Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe" (Kent State University Press, $28), is a compilation of strips highlighting Lisa's struggles and successes throughout the course of her cancer.

"Funky Winkerbean" appears in more than 400 newspapers across the nation. When he's not writing, the Medina, Ohio, resident reads, listens to music, goes to movies and plays tennis Rwith his wife, Cathy. The couple has a son, Brian, who works in production at a television station in Cincinnati.

Were you into comics as a child?

I think I learned to read by having my dad read me a lot of the cartoons because I would see the comics in the newspaper and I would want to know what's going on there. I would want to understand it even before I could read.

How did you come up with the name "Funky Winkerbean"?

I was going to call the main character T.D., which was named after my roommate from college. I took a lot of my characters from real life, but "Doonesbury" had just come out and he had a character named B.D. so they said they needed a new name for the title character. So one day in class I passed out sheets of paper and said just write down whatever's an interesting name and I gathered all those from all my classes and my wife and I sat down at the kitchen table and eventually we pulled together Funky Winkerbean.

In "Funky Winkerbean," you have Lisa and Les discuss how comics should be funny, but yours isn't. Why?

It grew out of the first thing I ever did, which was a story line dealing with teenage pregnancy, and that involved Lisa. She opened a door for me and showed me that you could do this in this medium and that there was a receptive audience out there for it. And then, having done that story, it forced my characters to grow up because I knew I wasn't going to be able to go back.

How do you create your strips?

I have writing pads in the car, next to the bed, everywhere I can think of an idea because I got so tired of thinking of an idea and going, boy, that's great, I won't forget that and then I forget it. It makes you insane. I also love sitting on my porch and writing on my laptop. Once every month or so, I go around and harvest all my notes, and I also have a book where I have some long-term premises.

How was Lisa created?

I was sitting in an art class in my old high school and I sketched this girl who was pregnant. I kept seeing it in my sketchbook as I'd go back looking for things to use, and I thought this is a real story, too. I took that girl and made her Lisa, but not pregnant; she just became a girlfriend of Les'.

She was just a typical high-school teenager. I had no grand plans other than that one story for her. But once we went through the teen pregnancy thing, she kept coming back and I knew her character was going to have to return, so when I did the time jump, I had Les and Lisa get together again. There was something magical about her; she kept leading me toward better work.What was your goal with Lisa, and why did you give her breast cancer?

I became interested in what happens to a relationship over time, especially when fate steps in. That's when the first cancer story line occurred to me and it probably occurred to me because there were a lot of groups doing a lot to raise awareness of breast cancer. One of the things that led to was it made it easier for people to talk about it. I began hearing from friends who were going through this and relatives who had been touched by breast cancer, and it allowed me to empathize with that.

The second part, where it got more intense, came from my own experience. I was diagnosed in 2003 with prostate cancer and in going through that, I realized that there's a huge void between emphasizing with the situation and being personally involved. I also realized that I had only skimmed over the surface of things in that first story because this time ... I was reaching stronger emotions like anger and worry and feelings of powerlessness. I think it was the release of those emotions that deepened the work and led to the outcome in the story line. Lisa had taken me to a lot of places, and now she was going to take me to the ultimate place.

Why did you decide to let Lisa die?

People said. "you're letting us down because Lisa shouldn't have gone off chemo because Lisa's supposed to be a strong fighter." She is a strong character, and she made a strong choice, a very brave choice in terms of what she wanted to do. And the other thing, too, people asked for a miracle all the time in this and I think one of the real miracles in life is love enduring through something like this. At the bottom, this is a love story between this couple, and I think that's one of the little miracles of life. Does your wife, Cathy, read your work before it hits the comics pages?

I don't keep anything secret, but about a year ago, we were out having dinner and I'm telling her about Lisa's story, and when I said Lisa dies, her eyes get wide and she looks at me and then she starts crying. She's sitting there crying, which caught me by surprise, and the waitress came by and looks at me like, "you cad."

What's next for "Funky Winkerbean"?

When this story ends, I didn't want to go into a long mourning period. I was looking for ways to bring light into it. So I have time jump forward so you could see 10 years down the road. Although Les and Summer certainly haven't forgotten Lisa, they've made a life for themselves and there's hope. Life does go on.

Batiuk says the royalties from the sales of "Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe" will be donated to Lisa's Legacy Fund for cancer research and education at University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information, visit www.funkywinkerbean. com and www.uhhospitals.org.

[e-mail]

[phone] Ext. 2128

TOM BATIUK 

>What: The author will talk about and sign copies of "Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe."

>Where: Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena.

>When: 7 p.m. Wednesday.

>Cost: Free. For information: [phone] or online at vromansbook store.com, www.funkywinkerbean.com.

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Tom Batiuk, the man behind the "Funky Winkerbean" comics, has created a book based on the breast cancer struggles of his character, Lisa.