Tuesday, October 23, 2007
By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
He's been bringing real-life issues like teen pregnancy and capital punishment to the funnies since 1972. But with his latest story arc, cartoonist Tom Batiuk of "Funky Winkerbean" pushes the envelope as far as it will go.One of his main characters, Lisa Moore, succumbed to metastasized breast cancer Oct. 4 after initially beating it with chemo and a mastectomy.
The whole story is collected in his new book, "Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe." Batiuk, who will appear tonight at Barnes & Noble in Clifton, opens up about his love for Lisa and his decision to end her life.
Q. Lisa first discovered she had breast cancer in 1999 but recovered after a period of struggle. When you finished that story arc, were you planning on coming back to it?
Once it was done the first time, I thought that was pretty much the last word I had to say on it.
Q. You've mentioned in several interviews that you changed your mind after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003.I had told the cancer story before. At that time, I hadn't been diagnosed with cancer. This time, I'm doing well, but the thought does creep into your mind. It probably led to the exploration and the decision to have Lisa not make it.
Q. Through the years, Lisa has been a great character for you, beginning with her pregnancy in high school. Why do you keep coming back to her?
That point has been raised a number of times, and I don't know that I have a really good answer for that. But it does seem that she is the character who initially opened the door for me with the teen pregnancy series. It basically showed me that there's more you could do with this medium. Doing that story also forced my characters to grow up. ...
I've done a bunch of non-Lisa stories, like the one about capital punishment, and it wasn't as good -- it didn't seem to me to be as good. I had to kind of fight my way through the story. Although she was involved in that; she was the lawyer.
I'm going to get a bit Twilight Zone on you. Some of these things would come to me while I was jogging, and it would come into your head not as an image, not as words, but I swear I would see it like a landscape of things with the Lisa story, and I could see the path it was going to take. It was very bizarre. ... But that's what's so magical about the Lisa stories. ...
I would go into those stories knowing they were going to be OK, because I already had a feel for things from beginning to end.
Q. What was your entry point into this particular story?
After my diagnosis and surgery, I was doing better. I was in Central Park, and on the benches there were plaques, usually dedicated to someone who has passed on. I began to think -- you know, there's a story attached to each of these, and usually a love story. This story is about how love endures once fate has intervened in things, and has its say.
The plaque was a way into the story for me. I thought, I can make this part of the story, and part of the telling. It really seems to tie into my feelings about relationships over time. ...
It's so nice now to write about adult relationships. It was fun doing it when they were in high school. But adult relationships are more nuanced and more complicated and more honest. It's the kind of thing I like to do these days.
FAST FACTS
Who: Tom Batiuk, creator of "Funky Winkerbean."
What: Talk and book signing.
When: 7:30 tonight.
Where: Barnes & Noble, 395 Route 3 east, Clifton. 973-779-2730.
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
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