As regular readers of the daily strip know, one of the recurring characters in Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean, breast cancer survivor Lisa, discovered this week that the disease has not been in remission, as she had believed, but in fact had progressed. This plot development has led to a couple of feature interviews with Batiuk, namely this one and this one.

Batiuk likens Lisa’s approach to cancer to that of Elizabeth Edwards, presidential candidate John Edwards’ wife, who announced in March that her breast cancer had recurred and spread.
“One of the things that crossed my mind while watching her is the way breast cancer is perceived, the way people diagnosed with it now behave. They don’t cower in a corner,” he said from his home studio about 30 miles southwest of Cleveland.
Batiuk said he was relieved when he finished writing and drawing the story line. “It was a hard story. … But it’s the work I feel best about,” Batiuk said.

You can read this week’s series of strips here. If, by some chance you’re tired of the strip’s relentlessly bleak outlook, you could always read this parody. But then you’d have no heart at all.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Comic Books, Creators, Internet, Interviews, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.