Luann Artist’s Roots in Burbank : Cartoon Success Draws on Puberty

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-age years as fodder for Luann, a comic strip that made its debut in March and today is carried by 120 newspapers and 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 creator, who now lives in San Marcos, near San Diego, from anonymity as a 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, with introductions by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, are scheduled to come out early next year.

Tests Abroad

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 unusual 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.”

Voila, Luann.

The artist acknowledges 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.”

Evans concedes that times have changed since he was going through puberty in Burbank. Consequently, he employs an assortment of tools to stay hip to 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.”

Somewhat Frumpy

The star of the strip, Luann, is a freckled, somewhat frumpy “lovable 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 that have struck a chord in schoolteachers, parents and teen-agers who have written him.

‘You Know Our Daughter’

“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 Times. The Times recently replaced Luann with a strip titled Calvin and Hobbes, which is about a younger child. Times Editor William F. Thomas said the newspaper is experimenting with the comic page and wants to try new cartoonists.

Evans, the father of a 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, has the bearded look of a folk musician. He knew early that cartooning was for him.

“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.”

Realistic Expectations

Eventually, 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. For now, though, Evans is quite 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.”