Drawn to a close

Lisa Moore, a “Funky Winkerbean” comic strip character whose life unfolded in the nation’s newspapers as if it were a real-life drama, died Thursday. She was 36.
Despite being an ink-on-paper drawing from cartoonist Tom Batiuk’s mind and pen, Moore lived a complex life that drew readers’ praise and condemnation for introducing mature themes into the funny pages.
Over the years, Moore’s story line showed her as an attorney, a wife, a mother and a national crusader for cancer awareness. At the same time, the strip stopped being a collection of gag jokes about high school life and started tackling life-and-death topics.
Many readers followed Moore’s realistic experiences with delight and reactions that ranged from belly laughs to salty tears.
But others recoiled at reading about her teenage pregnancy and two struggles against breast cancer, considering such material unsuitable for the comics page.
The strip appears in more than 400 newspapers across the country.
Moore first learned of her breast cancer in 1999. She survived, after a mastectomy and painful chemotherapy. Moore’s cancer returned earlier this year and she decided against undergoing another round of chemotherapy, a decision that guaranteed she would die by the end of this year.
In the months leading up to Thursday’s deathbed scene, Moore lost her hair and her body withered.
Meanwhile, an overlapping story line allowed Moore to meet and reconcile with Darin, the son she had given up for adoption while she was still a high school student.
Batiuk, who lives in Medina, Ohio, said he decided to allow Moore to die years ago, reflecting his awareness of the disease following his own successful fight against prostate cancer.
Batiuk said he will miss drawing Moore as a regular character, but that she will continue to appear in the strip in flashbacks and other ways as the “Funky Winkerbean” story immediately jumps ahead to a decade after Moore’s death.
“She’s been a great character to have,” Batiuk said in an interview last week as Moore neared death.
“She’s allowed me to grow as a cartoonist.”
Moore’s struggle against cancer is the subject of Batiuk’s biographical book, “Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe,” published earlier this year by Kent State Press.
All proceeds from sales of that book will go to the University Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland.
The hospital has established the Lisa’s Legacy Fund to support cancer education and research.
Dr. Stanton Gerson, director of the Ireland Cancer Center, said hospital officials were so impressed with the publicity generated by Lisa’s fight against cancer that they decided to use the cartoon character’s name as rallying point for cancer education and research efforts.
“Tom has done much to let women who are fighting breast cancer know that they are not alone,” Gerson wrote in a statement.
“And through the Lisa’s Legacy Fund, we will be able to continue making progress in our ultimate goals of preventing, controlling and eradicating cancer in all of its different forms.”