Make ‘Em Laugh : Cartoonist Attempts to Draw a Chuckle Over Adolescence

Growing up in Burbank, Greg Evans was your typical Richie Cunningham-type teen-ager, struggling, like his peers, with pimples, girls, grades and siblings.

But unlike many adults, who bury memories of that complicated, awkward age called adolescence, Evans, 38, is exploiting his teen years as fodder for Luann, a comic strip that debuted in March and today is carried by 120 newspapers in nearly all of the nation’s major media markets.

In just eight months, Luann, which follows a clumsy, confused, big-hearted 13-year-old through the traumas of daily life, has propelled its San Marcos creator from anonymity as a former high school art teacher to moderate comic-strip stardom.

A national youth theater group has made a musical based on Luann, and two specialized versions of the strip are carried by about 800 high school newspapers. Three books containing collections of the strip, works christened with an introduction by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, are due out early next year.

The Cinderella story doesn’t stop there. Luann is being test-marketed abroad and preliminary negotiations for a television special are under way. Editors at the syndicate that distributes the strip are billing Luann as the best comic strip about youngsters since Peanuts.

“The expressions Greg draws and the insights he has into how kids think today are really marvelous,” said Lewis Little, a News America Syndicate vice president who signed Evans. (Little also discovered Garfield’s creator, Jim Davis.) “It’s as if he’s crawled inside the head of a teen-age girl.”

Evans and News America officials suspect that the flurry of attention Luann has attracted stems from the strip’s unique theme: Few other contemporary strips attempt to get a laugh out of adolescence.

“One day, after failing with silly strips about bumbling policemen, clowns and a cat and parrot, I looked at the comic page and said, ‘What’s missing? What void can I fill?’ ” Evans said during a recent interview. “I realized there wasn’t much for women and there was almost nothing for teens. So I settled on an adolescent girl.”

Et voila, Luann.

The artist admits that the first question people ask him is, “How can a middle-aged male claim to understand and then comedically convey the emotional turmoil of being female and 13?”

“It’s simple,” Evans said, “I can identify with Luann. When I was in school I was just like her--average, not the big man on campus, but not the nerd, either. Just somewhere in that anonymous middle mass.

“And boys worry just as much about their dates, weight, hair and complexion as girls do, though they’re not supposed to show it as much. If Luann is patterned after anyone, she’s patterned after me.”

Nevertheless, Evans concedes that times have changed since he was groping his way through puberty in Burbank. Consequently, he employs an assortment of tools to stay hip to the latest teen trends.

“I subscribe to a young girls’ book club so I don’t miss the newest heartthrob romance, and I get Teen magazine,” Evans said. “Teen and Seventeen are great. In one issue I can find all sorts of gags and get insights into fingernail polish, special shampoos--things that are a little foreign to me.”

Evans does some serious anthropological research as well, staking out the burger stand across from the local high school and observing for an hour or two--”to pick up attitudes, speech, dress.” His two children, Gary, 10, and Karen, 6, are another source of inspiration.

“I’ve got to do my homework,” Evans said, “because you can’t fool teen-agers.”

Occasionally, the artist’s quest for the ultimate in authenticity is blocked by editors, who have viewed some material as too crude for readers. The word “pimple,” for example, was discarded and replaced by “blemish.” And one pose of Luann’s brother applying deodorant was rejected because it exposed an armpit.

“It may sound silly, but the theory is people don’t want to open their morning paper over breakfast cereal and see the word pimple,” Evans said, adding that he does not feel that the editing threatens the comic’s artistic purity. The editors’ sensitivity, however, will prevent his heroine from grappling with any major crises, like pregnancy or drugs.

The star of the strip, Luann, is a freckled, somewhat frumpy “loveable loser” character--self-critical, not terribly confident and terminally average in just about everything.

Her adventures, which integrate humor and the poignancy of growing pains, revolve primarily around her crush on the cutest boy in school, her relations with her older brother and conversations with two friends--Bernice, her confidante, and Delta, her “bad,” fashion-conscious black friend. Sometimes, Luann is pictured alone with her high-tech diary--a tape recorder and microphone.

An example:

BERNICE: Listen to this, Luann: “The average teen-ager spends two hours a day feeling angry, depressed or insecure.”

LUANN: Well I’ll be. I’m finally above average in something.

Not a belly-buster, maybe, but Evans said it is segments like this one that have struck a chord in school teachers, parents and teen-agers who have written him about the strip.

“A lot of them say something like, ‘Gee, you know our daughter inside out,’ or ‘You must be looking in our living room window,’ ” Evans said. “I’ve gotten a few letters from girls named Luann, and one from a girl who wanted to do a class report on me but went to the library and couldn’t find me in ‘Who’s Who.’ I sent her a bio sheet.”

Despite those reviews, a handful of newspapers have canceled Luann, including the Los Angeles Times. The Times is dropping Luann effective Monday and replacing it with a strip titled “Calvin and Hobbes,” which is about a younger child. Times Editor William F. Thomas said The Times is experimenting with the comic page and wants to try new cartoonists.

Evans, a slim man who has the bearded look of a folk musician, knew early on that cartooning was for him. He read Mad Magazine and Superman comics and longed to meet Charles Schulz, whose American institution, Peanuts, he adored. While other kids clowned around the playground, Evans drew.

“I had two dreams when I was young--to work as an animator at Disney or to cartoon for Mad Magazine,” Evans recalled. “Well, they never called me.”

So he became a high school art teacher. That career was relatively short-lived: “It felt like police work. There just wasn’t a lot of learning going on in Art 101.”

Next came a stint as a graphic artist with a television station in Colorado. There, Evans learned to use a robot in promotional stunts. Later, when the family moved back to California, Evans bought his own robot and launched a business using the mechanical creature at trade shows, company mixers and other events. He continues to perform with the radio-controlled robot, although his income from penning Luann more than covers the family’s needs.

“I can’t sit hunched over a drawing board all the time, and it’s good to get out among people,” Evans said. “I like doing the robot because, like cartooning, you’re entertaining people, but you’re one step removed from your audience. You know me. I’m the guy who always wanted to step into the Mickey Mouse costume at Disneyland.”

Ultimately, Evans would love to see Luann reap the acclaim--and big bucks--enjoyed by creators of Peanuts and that internationally beloved fat cat comic, Garfield. But he’s realistic.

“You can put Garfield or Snoopy on a lunch box, a towel, anything, and that’s where the big dollars are,” he said. “Luann just doesn’t have that kind of broad appeal.”

Still, in hopes of increasing Luann’s merchandising potential, Evans will soon introduce a few new characters--Puddles, a dog; Turbo the turtle, and Lindy, a baby that Luann will look after. As for other future plans, “there’s lots of talk.”

For now, though, Evans is exceedingly happy that “some Joe Blow from San Marcos was able to break into the comic business, without an agent, and make it big overnight.”

“It never ceases to amaze me that I can sit here in my home in San Marcos, Calif., and draw these things and hundreds, even thousands of people around the world read it, laugh and maybe even tape it to their refrigerator,” he said.

“That’s just so exciting.”